(Prague active 1723–1768)
A picture gallery with two collectors and a painter at his easel,
oil on canvas, 79 x 96 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France, until first half of 2019

Nothing is known about the origins and training of the painter Anton Franz Hampisch. It is only known that in 1727 he and two colleagues appraised the famous collection of Count Kolowrat in Prague and Reichenau (Eastern Bohemia). Hana Seifertová wrote about Hampisch in 1997 (see H. Seifertová, in: H. Seifertová/A. Sevcik [eds.], Dialog mit Alten Meistern, Prager Kabinettmalerei 1690–1750, exhibition catalogue, Brunswick 1997, p. 44): ‘For instance, a composition by Anton Franz Hampisch (active between 1723 and 1768 in Prague) that has survived paraphrases Teniers’s Picture Gallery of Archduke Leopold William in a very interesting manner. The painter, who was obviously not overly innovative, strictly adopted his famous predecessor’s pictorial layout, but filled it with paintings by well-known artists from Prague and with works he knew from the local collections. He also imitated the figures in their positions and interactions. Unlike Johann Michael Bretschneider (1656–1727), another Bohemian artist who had likewise specialised in cabinet paintings, he did not choose printed models, but reduced various compositions in scale that were familiar to him from aristocratic collections. Among the portraits we can find, for example, the self-portrait of Peter Brandl from 1725 (private collection), Rubens’s composition of Mary Magdalene and Martha, which in the eighteenth century was in the collection of Count Nostitz in Prague (now Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), in addition to Correggio’s Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine (Musée du Louvre, Paris), landscapes by Joos de Momper and Johann Heinrich Roos, as well as battle scenes by Jacques Courtois. Hampisch mostly resorted to paintings he had seen in the Kolowrat Collection.’

Beneath the pictures shown hanging in the artist’s studio, Hampisch wrote the names of the painters. The name below a bacchanal reads Jan van Dalen (1620 - after 1653). A pair of magnificent flower still lifes bears the name of Jan Philips van Thielen (1618–1667). A work by Gerard Thomas (1663–1720) depicts a peasant interior. In the uppermost row, on the right-hand side, is a military camp by Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668). A still life with a boiled lobster is a work by the painter Gaspar van den Hoecke (circa 1585 - before 1661). Next to it is the portrait of a bearded man inscribed with the name of Rhyn (it was obviously considered a work by Rembrandt). To the left of the painter, who leans against his easel, appear two peasant figures by Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6–1638). In the middle row at the far left there is a gentleman’s portrait given to van Dyck (1599–1641).

Hana Seifertová (op. cit. 1997): ‘Prague was one of the few centres where the subject of the ‘painted gallery’ was still pursued in the first half of the eighteenth century. In other places, above all in Antwerp, painters preferred to depict artists in their studios at the time. In this way, the prestige of painting pushed to the fore in contexts different from those exhibited in gallery interiors. The artists of Prague held on to the old theme and, as can be seen from their works, had a profound understanding of formal principles and hidden meanings. The Flemish examples did not serve as mere models, but rather provided them with fresh impetus, thereby lending a traditional motif a contemporary appearance.’

Comparable cabinet paintings by Franz Anton Hampisch are conserved in the National Gallery in Prague and in the Muzeum Narodove in Warsaw. For comparative literature on the artist please see: L. Slavicek, Visual Documentation of the Aristocratical Collections in Baroque Bohemia, in: Opuscula Historiae Artium, Studia Minora Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis, F 40, 1996, pp. 75–87; and H. Seifertová/A. Sevcik, Dialog mit Alten Meistern, Prager Kabinettmalerei 1690–1750, exhibition catalogue, Brunswick 1997, p. 44, fig. 40.