Private collection, Monaco;
Anonymous sale ('Property from a Deceased's Estate'), London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2000, lot 237, for £260,000, where acquired by Giacomo Algranti on behalf of the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has an old, possibly original, stretcher and a lining probably from early in the last century. Both are strong and there are no structural problems at all. The general condition overall is also extremely good, with no accidental damage at all. The sky has retained its fine transitions of colour unworn with scarcely any retouching apart from a few minute lines to mute occasional craquelure. Along the top and left edges a little flicked cosmetic toning may be to dull superficial brightness, conceivably from a previous frame. The architecture and background is also finely preserved in general, with a few small retouchings in the rocks to the right. The foreground figures are largely most beautifully intact, especially in the vivid highlights and colours, for example the lovely central woman carrying baskets of fish, with a child, or the lordly figure to the right minutely observed in every detail. There are various strengthening surface retouchings in the dark shadows of several figures, for instance in the folds of the knee breeches of two or three of the crouching men on the right, in the cassock of the friar on the left, the darks of the dog in the centre, and elsewhere. Such darks may be thin despite all the surrounding lighter paint being strong and finely intact. Nearby in the central middle distance there is rather wider surface strengthening in the little inlet of the port, where the water and some of the surrounding brushwork in the rocks and beach have been slightly worn. Nevertheless the condition of the painting otherwise throughout is exceptionally good. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Despite the significant role Pietro Fabris played in the development of eighteenth-century Neapolitan landscape painting, we know very little about his early life. Although his work focused so closely on capturing the quintessence of Neapolitan everyday life, Fabris describes himself as "Inglese" in the dedication to his Raccolta di varii Vestimenti ed Arti Del Regno of 1773, and is similarly referred to in the introduction to Sir William Hamilton's, Campi Phlaegrei, a study of volcanoes which Fabris illustrated. Other circumstantial evidence which points to his possible English origins is his continued connection with London, exhibiting at the Free Society of Artists in 1768 and the Society of Artists in 1772. Perhaps it was this English connection which made him so popular with the English Grand Tourists whose southernmost stop was often in Naples or perhaps, it was in homage to his English patrons that he went to such lengths to encourage his links with England.

This Mediterranean view is a fine example of Fabris' talent for blending the colourful aspects of daily life with his careful approach to the topographically accurate description of landscape. The date of 1777 suggests that the work may have been conceived as a pendant to his Figures merry-making on the shore at Posillipo, beyond them Vesuvius smoking, signed and also dated 1777, and of similar size which was formerly with Algranti.¹

Though still a small fishing village during the eighteenth century, the expansion of Naples meant that Mergellina was gradually absorbed and is now part of the city itself. Originally known as the Villa Sirena, the Palazzo Sant'Anna sits just west of the Mergellina harbour and is so-named after Anna Stigilano who inherited the house in 1630.




1. The painting had been previously sold New York, Christie's, 16 January 1992, lot 129, for $450,000.