Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Two Men Tending an Ox

Claude Lorrain
1600-1682

Two Men Tending an Ox

1635-1645
4 x 6 inches (102 x 152 mm)
Pen and brown ink over black chalk.
2017.154

Thaw Collection.

Notes
When the dealer Hans Calmann acquired Claude's Animal Album at sale in 1957, it had been kept intact in the Odescalchi family in Rome since at least the eighteenth century. Calmann dismantled the album and sold the 64 sheets individually; this sheet was no. 56 of the album. While most of the drawings in the Animal Album depict animals singly or in small groups, the present sheet is among the twelve that show animals with their attendant herdsmen. Claude observed two men tending an unyoked ox: one man grasps the ox's horn and steadies the animal while the other reaches underneath the animal. Geometrical designs on the verso have bled through the sheet and suggest Claude was experimenting with perspective.
Associated names
Odescalchi family, former owner.
Calmann, Hans M., 1899-1982, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.
Bibliography
Thaw Catalogue Raisonné, 2017, no. 239, repr.
Stampfle, Felice, and Cara D. Denison. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Thaw. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975, no. 17, repr.
Roethlisberger, Marcel, Claude Lorrain. The Drawings, 1968, no. 228.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department