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an old black and white photo of a man with a hatan old wooden box with a piece of paper on top of it
Wannenes Art Auctions

17 - FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING (1812–1889)
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Estimate €50 - €70
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Description
FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING (1812–1889) large-format photographic print on albumen paper, in sepia tones, depicting the English poet Robert Browning in his later years, seated in a meditative pose; set in a fluted wooden frame with a gilded profile FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING (1812–1889) 64 × 50.5 cm Provenance: Venice, Palazzo Barbaro, the Curtis family (donated by Robert Barrett Browning to Daniel Sargent Curtis, 1890) Bibliography: ‘Gondola Days’: Isabella Stewart Gardner and her world at Palazzo Barbaro-Curtis, exhibition catalogue edited by R. Mamoli Zorzi, Venice 2004, p. 93, no. 86 The photographic portrait presented here arrived at Palazzo Barbaro in 1890, the year following Robert Browning’s death, as a gift from the poet’s son, Robert Barrett ‘Pen’ Browning, to Daniel Sargent Curtis: a tangible testament to the deep bond that had united the great Victorian poet with the Curtis family during the last decade of his life. Browning met the Curtis family in 1879 on the Lido, having been introduced by Mrs and Mr William Wetmore Story, and from then on he spent a great deal of time with them both in Venice and in London. Daniel Curtis’s diary, now held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, documents the many occasions they spent together: gondola trips to the Curtis’s garden on the Giudecca and to the Lido, walks as far as Malamocco and, above all, the poetry readings held by Browning in the famous ‘cameròn’ of Palazzo Barbaro, where the poet used to gather friends and admirers. It was at Palazzo Barbaro that Browning gave his final public reading, on 19 November 1889, presenting a number of poems later published posthumously in the collection *Asolando*. Less than a month later, on 12 December 1889, the poet died at Ca’ Rezzonico. The Curtis family played an active part in the Venetian funeral, Ralph Curtis created the poet’s funeral mask and designed the heliotrope-coloured drape that covered the coffin, as well as documenting in two drawings the funeral boat adorned with a gilded angel that accompanied the coffin along the Grand Canal to the island of San Michele; Ariana Curtis, meanwhile, gathered laurel and berries in the garden on the Giudecca for the wreath laid upon the coffin. The gift of this portrait by the poet’s son thus seals, in the year following his death, a deep friendship that made Palazzo Barbaro, in the 1880s, one of the Venetian places most intimately linked to the memory and life of Robert Browning. Key bibliography: ‘Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and her world at Palazzo Barbaro-Curtis’, exhibition catalogue edited by R. Mamoli Zorzi, Venice 2004, pp. 91–96 R. Mamoli Zorzi, Ralph W. Curtis: An American Painter in Venice, Venice 2019, pp. 51–53
See original version (Italian)
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About the sale FROM THE CURTIS COLLECTIONS AT PALAZZO BARBARO: PAINTINGS, FURNITURE AND WORKS OF ART
Auction location
Auction time 09/29/2026 at 2:45 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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