FRANZ JOSEF DE PAULA FERG (Vienna, 1689 - London, 1740) Landscape with travellers Signed lower right: F Ferg f Oil on copper, 32X26 cm Provenance: Private collection London, Phillips, 6 July 1993, lot 70 (as Franz Josef De Paula Ferg) London, Christie's, 23 April 2004, lot 160 (as Franz Josef De Paula Ferg) Private Collection A pupil of Adam Pankraz, Gorge Andreas Wasshuber and Hans Graf, Ferg applied himself to drawing and engraving, studying Callot and Le Clerc, before becoming an assistant to Josef Orient. In 1718, he left Vienna for good and moved to Bamberg and later to Leipzig, where he met the landscape painter Johann Thiele for whom he painted the secondary parts of his works. After a stay in Lower Saxony, he moved to London shortly after 1720. Ferg painted views with ruins, seascapes, scenes of everyday life; in his compositions the landscape is always very accurate, in analogy with the Flemish masters, while the figures seem closer to the French taste. His familiarity with etching led him, in 1726, to produce a series of folios entitled Capricci, while his ornamental felicity and experience as a porcelain decorator in Meissen led him to collaborate with the Chelsea factory. His paintings, mostly on copper and of small format, display a fantastic compositional grace, especially when they depict views in the Italianate style.