Live Auction 13246Old Master Drawings
GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON (PALMANOVA 1762-1844 MILAN)
Lot 69 Property from the Holdings of the Ford Foundation

GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON (PALMANOVA 1762-1844 MILAN)

Design for an interior with a staircase

Closed24 January 2017

Price Realised

USD 4,750

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GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON (PALMANOVA 1762-1844 MILAN)
Design for an interior with a staircase
with inscription 'Bison'
black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolor
20 3/8 x 14 1/8 in. (36 x 51.5 cm.), including a strip of 5 ½ in. (14 cm.) at left folded over

with Yvonne Ffrench, London, where acquired by the Ford Foundation in November 1966.

Specialist note

This gleaming design for a wall decoration is an entirely distinctive work by the painter and designer Bernardino Bison. The sheet belongs to the artist’s early maturity, when he was inspired by a new classicism and formal restraint. The all’antica decorative inset appears in a similar watercolor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 67.707.1; M.L. Meyers, Architectural and Ornamental Drawings, New York 1975, no. 18, ill.) and relates closely to some motifs frescoed by Bison on the first floor of Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati alle Zattere, Venice (1793).