
caption
attributed to Franz de Paula Ferg, The Road to Emmaus
Photo courtesy of Dave Penman (All rights reserved)
Details
- Country House
- Trewithen
- Title(s)
- The Road to Emmaus
- Medium and support
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Overall height: 24.5 cm, Overall width: 33.5 cm
- Artist
- attributed to Franz de Paula Ferg (1689-1740)
- Catalogue Number
- TN11
Description
Ferg was born in Vienna but worked in London from about 1724. In 1726 he created a series of eight etched Capricci (Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco), which help to date many smaller pictures to the London period. His late cabinet pieces contain fewer, clearly drawn figures, set in Italianate landscapes with ruins; their Arcadian mood, brilliant colour and Rococo manner made them popular with patrons. George Vertue left a detailed description of Ferg’s work, suggesting that his commercial success in Britain resulted from his ability to synthesise and imitate popular, earlier Continental painters such as Pieter Bout (1640–1689), Adrian Boudewijns (1644–1719) and Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1594–1667). Vertue described him as:
Vertue also left an account of Ferg’s unfortunate domestic life and demise:
The present composition was a popular one and at least one other version survives (fig. 1). It is possibly identifiable as the painting in an inventory of 1739 at Trewithen: ‘no.20 Christ and ye 2 Disciples at Emaus.’ This is precisely the sort of small-scale cabinet painting that might have appealed to Philip Hawkins I and would have been readily available on the London art market.
The Trewithen inventory of March 1928 records the picture hanging on the Middle Staircase: ‘Ferg – “The Journey to Emmaus” 10in by 13in – gilt frame’.
Figure 1.
Franz de Paula Ferg, The Road to Emmaus, undated. Oil on copper, 25 × 33 cm. Private Collection.
Digital image courtesy of Asar Studios/Alamy Stock Photo (RFTXBM). (All rights reserved)