Victor-Jean NICOLLE (Paris, 1754 – 1826)

Private collection, Île-de-France.

Victor-Jean Nicolle first trained in Paris under Nicolas Malhortie at the École royale gratuite de dessin. Having won a prize for perspective in 1771, he continued his apprenticeship in the studio of the architect and draughtsman Louis François Petit-Radel (1739–1818), who introduced him, in particular, to the world of Piranesi. During these years, he developed a keen interest in the buildings and ruins of antiquity, a passion that led him to travel to Italy on two separate occasions, from 1787 to 1798 and then from 1806 to 1811. Settled on the other side of the Alps, he produced numerous depictions of Rome and Naples, and became known by the Italianised form of his name, Nicolli.

This rich collection we present here offers a glimpse into the artist’s methods. Nicolli sketches. He sketches series of figures in varied and numerous poses, the façade of a house, the view of a hamlet as he approaches it, the intimate prayer of a peasant woman. When he adds colour, his watercolour palette, always soft, imbues the whole with an atmosphere where life is good. It is through his Italian travels that we follow the artist, an Italy upon which he casts an intimate gaze. Undoubtedly drawn by a sense of nostalgia, a distinct fondness for ruins, Nicolle wanders between Rome, Florence, Venice and the countryside that lies between them. A prolific draughtsman, he captures in his sketches the panorama of a country where the daily lives of its humblest inhabitants, those of its day-trippers, and the millennia-old monuments—whose ruins he loses himself in—all intermingle. By scattering his figures amongst meticulous architectural studies, he thus reinforces the picturesque atmosphere that links the drawings in his body of work.