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Mount Athos Carved as a Monument to Alexander the Great
Inscriptions
Inscribed lower right: P. Valenciennes / [...] 1796
Provenance
James Hunt (died 1801), London, offered for sale, Christie’s, London, February 5, 1802, lot 62, 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 130, to G. Fry for £36 [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
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art of the Edge: European Frames, 1300–1900, October 17–December 14, 1986, cat. 56.
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 (ill.), pp. 22, 26 n. 7. “French Paintings Recently Acquired by The Art Institute of Chicago,” Burlington Magazine 126, 976 (1984), p. 463, fig. 86. 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, 256 (ill.), 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.). Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (New Haven, Conn; London: Yale University Press, 2002) pp. 14–5 (ill.).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (French, 1750–1819)
- Date
- 1796
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 41.9 × 91.4 cm (16 1/2 × 36 in.); Framed: 59.4 × 109 × 7.7 cm (23 3/8 × 42 7/8 × 3 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.
- 1983.36
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-00001421
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