GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO (VENICE 1696-1770 MADRID)

According to a handwritten note on the back of the frame, the drawing was purchased from the London dealers E. Parsons and Sons. Between the end of the 19th Century and the first decades of the 20th Century, the London firm had acquired at auction several albums of drawings by Tiepolo which had belonged to Edward Cheney (1803-1884). Parsons appears to have been the buyer of a lot containing nine albums of Tiepolo’s drawings in the sale of Cheney’s collection in 1885 (Sotheby’s, London, 29 April 1885, lot 1024), but to have also acquired three other albums with the artist’s drawings several years later in 1914 (Christie’s, London, 14 July 1914, lot 49). Some of the albums were sold intact while others were broken up and the drawings sold separately to many collectors over the years (G. Knox, Catalogue of the Tiepolo Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1960, pp. 3-9).