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Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great
Provenance
James Hunt (died 1801), London, offered for sale, Christie’s, London, February 5, 1802, lot 61, bought in [according to Maria Wilson of Christie’s, letter of January 9, 1996, to Larry Feinberg, in curatorial files]; Hunt family, London. Reverend George Augustus Frederick Hart (died 1872), M. A., Vicar of Arundel, Tower House, Arundel, Sussex; by descent to his niece Catherine (Mrs. John Lord); sold at Tower House, Arundel, Sotheby’s, May 20–21, 1873, lot 131, to G. Fry for £25 [British Museum annot. cat.]. Alderman Philip Spowart (died 1945), Berwick-upon-Tweed, from c. 1937 [according to recollection of Alan G. Burns, letter of February 9, 1988 in curatorial file]; his widow, Anne Nicholson Spowart (née Wood); given to her nephew, Alan G. Burns, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1960 [Alan G. Burns letters of April 4, 1984, and February 9, 1988, in curatorial file]; sold, Henry Spencer and Sons, Retford, Nottinghamshire, November 9, 1978, lot 212, to Crozier acting on behalf of Trafalgar Galleries and P. and D. Colnaghi, London, 1978 [A. G. E. Marriot letter of April 10, 1984, and notes in curatorial file]; transferred to Colnaghi, New York, 1982; sold to the Art Institute, 1983.
Exhibition history
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Egyptomania: L’Egypte dans l’art occidental, 1730–1930, January 20–April 18, 1994, cat. 86; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, June 17–September 18, 1994; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, October 16, 1994–January 29, 1995.
Publications
F. P. Seguier, A Critical and Commercial Dictionary of the Works of Painters (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1870), p. 211. Ralph N. James, Painters and Their Works (London: L. U. Gill, 1897), vol. 3, p. 154. Werner Oechslin, “Dinocrates and the Myth of the Megalomaniacal Institution of Architecture,” Daidalos 4 (1982), pp. 12–13, pp. 22, 26 n. 7. Margaret Smith in Alan Wintermute, ed., Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France, exh. cat. (New York: Colnaghi, 1990), pp. 250, under cat. 52, 258, under cat. 55. Martin Warnke, Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), pp. 90, 102 (ill.). Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Art Institute of Chicago/Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 146–52 (ill.).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750–1819)
- Date
- 1796
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 42 × 91.1 cm (16 9/16 × 35 7/8 in.); Framed: 59.3 × 107.7 cm (23 5/16 × 42 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- oil on canvas
- Style
- 18th Century
- Place
- France
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Harold T. Martin
- Accession no.
- 1983.35
More by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00001420
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