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Fed by two waterfalls, an olive-green stream with foamy whitewater spills toward us, cascading over rocks and boulders in this vertical painting. Sunlight cuts across the sheer, rust and caramel-brown cliffs that fill the composition beyond the waterfalls, throwing the area closest to us in shadow. The stream is fed by a tall, thin waterfall to our left and a wider, lower waterfall to our right. One dark rock pokes out of the pool at the foot of the waterfalls. Tumbling forward over a broad, horizontal ledge about a third of the way up from the bottom, the stream breaks over massive rocks into fan-shaped cascades. The rushing white water is painted with choppy brushstrokes. Dark green shrubs are tucked into the corners and crevices of the cliffs and rocks.

Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld

View of the Waterfalls at Tivoli, 1788

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 91

Medium

oil on paper on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 50.8 x 38.1 cm (20 x 15 in.)

framed: 67.3 x 54.6 x 5.1 cm (26 1/2 x 21 1/2 x 2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Fern and George Wachter

Accession Number

2005.140.1

Artists / Makers

Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld (painter) French, 1758 - 1846

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower right: J.ph.Bidauld / 1788.; upper center reverse: grote de la sibylle a Tivoli / 1788

Provenance

(Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 23 January 2003, no. 111); George and Fern Wachter, New York; gift 2005 to NGA.

Associated Names

Sotheby's
Wachter, George and Fern

Exhibition History

2020: True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2020 - 2022, no. 22, repro.

Bibliography

2009: Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 1, 9-10, color repro.