Friedrich Nerly

Frizzoni collects ion, Bergamo/Varese

Private collects ion, Italy, until 2025

Painted in Milan in 1837, this work is unique for Nerly, famed for his views of Venice. In an expansive landscape, a groom leads a bay Arabian over a sandy hillock, its coat shimmering in the sunlight. They are followed in the background by a second, mounted groom breaking in a foal. The setting appears to be the Po Valley, embellished with palm trees and a Bedouin camp for artistic effect and to accentuate the horses’ Arabian bloodline.

Until the recent discovery of this finished work, its existence could only be surmised from an oil study and from preparatory sketches in a sketchbook (figs. 1, 2 & 3), both executed in Milan in 1837, and now in the Angermuseum in Erfurt. The artist’s inscription on the oil study identifies the horse as King Wilhelm I of Württemberg’s Arabian Stallion ‘Tursi’, whose age the artist notes in his sketchbook was 5 years at the t.mes . An annotation in the sketchbook, moreover, gives the identity of the model for the groom as one Ibrahim Pacha, a servant of a local Milanese doctor.

King Wilhelm was among Nerly’s most important patrons. He established the stud for Arabian thoroughbreds near Stuttgart which gave rise to one of the most important bloodlines in Europe. The King, who liked to summer in Italy, appointed Nerly as his art agent. As his proxy, Nerly successfully negotiated the purchase of the Barbini-Breganze collects ion in Venice. In gratitude, the King awarded him a knighthood in 1852.

Fig. 1 Friedrich Nerly, Wilhelm I’s Arabian Stallion ‘Tursi’, 1837, oil on canvas, 29 by 38cm, Angermuseum Erfurt

Figs. 2 & 3 Friedrich Nerly, Figure studies in the artist’s sketchbook, 1837, Angermuseum, Erfurt