In 1864, THE year in which he was elected a Royal Academician, John Frederick Lewis (1804/05-76) exhibited a painting at the RA entitled A startling account, Constantinople (Fig.i). Modest in size, it was overshadowed by his other, larger and more showy paintings on view, The Hosh (court yard) of the house of the Coptic patriarch, Cairo and Caged doves, Cairo,1 and it was not mentioned in reviews either in the Athenceum or the Art Journal.2 It has received little attention since. Acquired by Joshua Dixon (1811-85), it formed part of his bequest in 1886 to the Bethnal Green Museum, an outpost of the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it was catalogued as An oriental interior.7. Despite published sugges tions as to its correct identity in the 1970s, and the appear ance in the same decade at Christie's of a watercolour version entitled Disputing accounts, the painting was not formally correctly catalogued until 2001.4

During John Singer Sargent's training in the studio of Carolus-Duran, he was instructed to believe that, of the old masters, Velazquez had the most to teach him.1 From the middle of the nineteenth century, the Spanish painter had become an important figure for a younger generation of realist artists, a proto-modernist revered for his faithful recording of reality and his mastery of tonal values. The recent exhibition Manet/Velazquez, held in Paris and New York in 2002-03, demonstrated how pervasive Velazquez's influence was on French nineteenth-century art, and how closely entwined it was with notions of the avant-garde.2 To study Velazquez's works in the Prado, a steady stream of artists made the pilgrimage to Madrid, among them Leon Bonnat, Thomas Eakins, Henri Regnault, and Carolus Duran who went to Spain in the early 1860s.3 The latter constantly invoked the name of the Spanish painter, admonishing his students: 'Cherchez la demi-teinte' adding, 'mettez quelques accents, et puis les lumieres [sic] . . . Velasquez, Velasquez, Velasquez, etudiez sans relache Velasquez'* Sargent needed little encouragement to follow Carolus-Duran's advice and, in the autumn of 1879, he travelled from Paris to Madrid in the company of two now forgotten French painters, Edmond-Charles Daux and Armand-Eugene Bach.5 We know from the Prado archives that Sargent spent almost six weeks in Madrid (14th October to 22nd Novem ber 1879), much of it passed in copying the work of Velazquez. Apart from studying the art of the old masters, he also became intensely interested in Spanish dancing, as is evident from two sketches of Spanish dancers drawn on the torn-up halves of a receipted bill from a hat-maker's shop in Madrid,6 and from subsequent works inspired by Spanish flamenco such as El jaleo (1880?82; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), Spanish dancer (c. 1881-82; private collec tion) and Spanish dance (c. 1881-82; Hispanic Society of America, New York), and the numerous surviving studies 13- Buffoonjuan de Calabazas, by John Singer Sargent. 1879. 106.6 by 82.5 cm. (David & David, Philadelphia). associated with them. He also gave a vivid description of flamenco music in a letter written to Vernon Lee soon after his return to Paris.7 At the same time, he was also excited by the architecture of the Alhambra, Granada, recording several of the courtyards there in a sequence of oils and water colours; and his absorption in Spanish daily life is seen, for example, in a sketch of a cafe in Seville.8 There are no extant letters by Sargent written from Spain, but we know from a later comment that the weather was uniformly bad: 'I regret the many months spent in Spain in the rain and bad weather that quite spoiled the trip as far as painting and enjoyment goes.'9 From southern Spain Sargent and one of his com panions crossed to north Africa, by way of Gibraltar, spend ing several weeks in a small house in Tangier. Here Sargent began work on his orientalist picture Fumee d'ambre gris (1880; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA), and also painted a number of sketches of buildings and street scenes on small mahogany panels.10 He returned to Paris in mid February 1880.

Little is yet known about the early part of Hans Rottenhammer's stay in Italy following his years of apprenticeship in Munich. Rudolf Peltzer drew attention to various manuscript notes made by the painter in the margin of his drawings, which provide exact dates for some of the events of his youth.1 One drawing in Rot terdam bears the note '158c, IN TERFISS', probably indicating that it was executed in Treviso. Peltzer therefore concluded that this was the year in which the artist left Munich for Italy. On a draw ing in the British Museum depicting two putti can be read the words 'In Romen desen 18 Augusto 1595'. Finally, an admirable chalk drawing of Venus and Cupid in Frankfurt is signed and dated 'ROTNHAMER 1596 VENETIA' (Fig.27). Since Karel van Mander seems to suggest that Rottenhammer settled in Rome before going to Venice,2 it was assumed that after a very short stop in the Veneto he went directly to Rome, where he was supposed to have arrived at the beginning of the 1590s and to have spent about five years.3 He was not thought to have returned to Venice until 1595 or 1596. However, a hitherto unpublished document allows us to reassess this chronology (see Appendix, document 1).

Frederic Leighton (1830-96) is renowned for his historical paintings, but he was also an accomplished landscape artist whose critical eye and deft draughtsmanship often lent a distinctive degree of authenticity to his depictions of nature. In this regard he set himself apart from most English landscape painters of his time. Leighton's life-long interest in travel played a significant role in his ability to capture the mood as well as the factual composition of a natural scene. It was his direct absorption in the landscape and his keen sensitivity to its form, colour and physical characteristics that informed the documentary scenes in his many oil-sketches of panoramic views.

If Guillaume Apollinaire was Giorgio de Chirico's strongest supporter and most intelligent critic during the artist's early years, he was not the only writer who recognised the latter's talent.1 Other critical reviews have gradually begun to surface that shed additional light on de Chirico's initial reception in Paris. Not sur prisingly, in view of his radical new aesthetics, his reception was rnixed. For example, Adolphe Tabarant, writing in Paris-Midi on 8th October 1913, perceived a glimmer of genius in de Chirico's works but lamented their funereal atmosphere. And while Andre Salmon in Montjoie! the following month praised the paintings, he complained that their tides were terrible.2