ECOLE NÉO-HÉLLÉNIQUE or GRAND TOUR. THISION. - Lot 15

ECOLE NÉO-HÉLLÉNIQUE or GRAND TOUR. THISION. [View of the Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergané, also known as Hephaestheion on Colonos Agoraios]. S.l.n.d. (ca. 1820-1840). Large watercolor on paper (31 x 48.5 cm), framed in antique gilt with motifs and marie-louise (framed 52 x 68 cm), unsigned. (Discreet oxidation). Beautifully painted architectural and picturesque view, depicting the temple and a view of the agora in their state prior to the great restorations of the XIXᵉ century, the style and period approaching Greek views à la Dodwell or Stackelberg. Probably the work of a traveler, perhaps because of its symbolism for Greece at the time: a must-see ancient destination or a place newly liberated from the Ottomans. The few figures in the foreground are dressed in blue and red uniforms in the Greco-Ottoman style, as seen in views of the agora in Dupré's Voyage (1825); the absence of a tree, as seen in an 1862 painting - Grigorios (1814-1869) in the Athens Museum - or in Antonio Schranz, Vue du Thiséion (temple d'Héphaïstos), (ca 1832) or Jean de Chacaton, Le Theseion vu du sud-est, in 1839 (Bénaki Museum), suggest that this painting was completed around 1820-1830. A peripteral hexastyle Doric temple, often erroneously named Theseion, it was an Orthodox church with a cemetery from the 5th century to 1834. Successively occupied by armies during the Greek War of Independence in the early 19th century, the Temple of Hephaestus was chosen by Otto I as the symbolic location for the edict making Athens the capital of the Greek kingdom. The interest that the site aroused was reflected in the neo-Hellenistic pictorial movement of the 19th century, with independence, our view oscillating between these 2 periods... [Greece].