Live Auction 17292Old Masters Evening Sale
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
Lot 43 The Property of a Trust

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

Punchinellos playing battledore and shuttlecock

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Price Realised

GBP 611,250

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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)
Punchinellos playing battledore and shuttlecock
signed ‘Domo Tiepolo f’ (lower right) and numbered, probably by the artist, '28' (altered by a later hand into '29') (in the border, upper left)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, watermark crown with letters GAF (cf. Heawood 877)
13 5/8 x 18 3/8 in. (34.5 x 46.5 cm)

Anonymous sale; London, Sotheby’s, 6 July 1920, part of lot 41 (where bought by Colnaghi for £610).
with Colnaghi, London, by whom sold, January 1921, to the following
with Richard Owen, Paris, by whom broken up and sold individually through Matthiesen, 24 March 1937, for £70 to
Brinsley, later Sir Brinsley, Ford (1908-1999).

Specialist note

The game battledore and shuttlecock – named after the racquet and projectile used in it – is a predecessor of badminton, named after the house where the game seems first to have been played in England in the middle of the nineteenth century. This delightful depiction of one of the pleasures of Punchinello’s childhood is similar to one representing a birthday party, now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (inv. 1987.017; see Gealt, op. cit., 1986, no. 82): included in both drawings are the same table, dogs, and company, including the woman with hat seen here framing the composition at right. Adelheid Gealt titled a sheet also in Providence ‘The badminton victory’ as it includes two battledores and a shuttlecock lying on the floor (op. cit., 1986, no. 18). The lower number (24) at upper left, however, probably indicates it precedes the present sheet in the storyline.