It is a curious fact that of the hundreds of surviving oil sketches made by Peter Paul Rubens none can be recognised in the documents relating to and recording the possessions owned by the artist at his death. Any trace of these painted sketches, on which the artist placed such value, has had to be sought among the 'dessins' or 'draughts' grouped together as a single lot in the 'Specification', or catalogue of those works intended for sale after Rubens's death in 1640.1 This col- location does, however, appear consistent with Rubens's own usage in a memorandum of 1614, in which he calls one of his sketches (Fig.l) a 'dissegno colorito'.2 It also conforms to what one finds in Italy throughout the sixteenth and for much of the seventeenth centuries. Monochrome oil sketches by the Carracci (Fig. 2) are called 'disegni' by both Mancini and Malvasia;3 and in 1640 Lanfranco offered to make a 'tela ildisegno' in hopes of winning a much coveted commission.4 Such references and those to the 'disegni ad olio' found in inventories of painters' estates or mentioned in correspondence,5 all suggest that far into the seventeenth century the oil sketch had not yet acquired a name of its own but was regarded as a species of drawing. Though, as the example of Rubens shows, oil sketches were not only made but also sold, this does nevertheless suggest a certain lack of certitude about the idea of sketching in paint. The circumstances under which a clear term emerges, which is the subject of this article, may thus also be taken as marking the moment when the oil sketch acquired its own identity.

John Constable sold relatively few of his paintings during his lifetime, and though most of his major works can be traced to significant collections there is a substantial portion of his oeuvre for which there is little initial provenance. After his death in 1837, many works were disposed of at the studio sale held at Fosters the following year, catalogued with only summary descriptions and sold in bundled lots which were largely bought by dealers. There is not much information about the men and women who subsequently acquired them, who may justly be termed their original owners,' and it is worth focusing on three early collectors of his work who may well be typical of a wider range of rural collectors in the 1840s and 1850s.

Giulio's Bonasone's print of Pan and a woman (Fig. 14) appears to be based on the dramatic encounter of a satyr and a nymph in Giulio Romano's fresco of the Marriage feast of Psyche in the Sala di Psiche at the Palazzo Te in Mantua (Fig.15),' and also on the antique sculpture of Pan and Apollo (Fig. 16) of which there were versions in the Cesi and Farnese collections in Rome.2 However, Bonasone's group has been developed to show Pan and a woman holding a cornucopia who may be Pomona (as Malvasia suggested)3 or, more likely, Ceres. The subject may be loosely inspired by Pausanias's story of Pan's discovery of Ceres, a fertility theme sometimes explored by sixteenth and seventeenth-century artists.4

Fragonard's painting at Chambery, usually known as Le jeu de la palette (Fig. 21), has baffled art historians who have sought to identify its precise subject. It can now be established that the mysterious game involving a paddle resembles a variation on 'cache-cache mitoulas' and allows a more appropriate title to be given to the painting since the paddle (palette) is being used to administer a penalty rather than being the defining tool of the game. Correctly identifying the pastime is, however, only a beginning if we wish to come to a deeper understanding of this image, which takes as its theme a particular type of amusement - a guessing game in which a player searches for something hidden and risks paying a forfeit if he errs. The subject matter is thus, to some extent, an analogy for a process of viewing that, like the details of the game itself, has been obscured by the passage of time.

When Joseph Wright sent his ambitious history painting, Miravan breaking open the tomb ofhis ancestors (Fig.25), to the 1772 exhibition of the Society of Artists in London, he knew that the subject would be unfamiliar to his viewers. He therefore provided a concise explanation for the catalogue:

An history, Miravan, a young nobleman of Ingria, breaking open the tomb of his ancestors in search of wealth. (Incited by this equivocal inscription, 'In this tomb is a treasure greater than Croesus possessed') found on entering it the following: 'Here dwells repose. Sacrilegious wretch, searchest thoufor gold among the dead! Go, son of avarice, THOU can'st not enjoy repose'.'