Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

Private collection Austria;
purchased by a European private collector,
by inheritance to the present owner

Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, 1591-1666, I Disegni (catalogue by Sir Denis Mahon), 1992, p. 270, no. 170, reproduced (the image reversed)

P. Bagni, Guercino a Cento. Le decorazioni di Casa Pannini, Bologna 1984, reproduced p. 133, fig. 103;
idem, Il Guercino e il suo Falsario, I Disegni di Paesaggio, Bologna 1985, p. 20, no. 2, reproduced

Laid down on an old backing and window mounted. Some slight foxing scattered around. A few minor cracks to the sheet due to the iron gall ink to the left of the center, on the area of shrubs and tree trunks near the river and rocks below. The image and media still very strong throughout this impressive sheet. Sold in a modern gilded frame
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This is a particularly handsome example of a landscape drawing by Guercino.  The artist seems to have explored these subjects mainly for his own amusement, and his landscape drawings hardly ever relate to any of his paintings.  Guercino must have found this exercise both interesting and challenging, as he produced a considerable number of landscapes (see also lots 25 and 46), executed with varying degrees of finish, but often as elaborate as the present composition.  They are generally drawn in pen and brown ink, though in very rare cases also in red chalk (see lot 46), and are typically very vigorous in their handling, with small figures almost engulfed in their dynamic landscape surroundings, yet still adding a narrative element.  Here, to the left of the composition we see a kneeling hunter, concentratedly peering down the barrel of his gun as he prepares to shoot the passing bird, his dog standing attentively at the ready just behind him.  Stylistically, this appears to be a mature work, but Guercino’s landscapes are difficult to date as his drawings of this type are very consistent in style and composition throughout his career.

As Mahon and Turner have observed, Guercino’s landscapes manifest the artist’s deep attachment to the countryside.¹  Most of his life was spent in the small town of Cento, and he clearly had great affection for the surrounding area, undoubtedly incorporating quotations from local landmarks such towers or buildings, and other specific locations into many of his compositions (see the previous lot).  Although landscapes were popular in the Bolognese tradition, beginning in particular with Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Guercino created a very personal type of landscape that was easily recognizable and much appreciated by collectors.  So much so, in fact, that they were imitated in the later eighteenth century by a clearly very successful faker, many of whose deceptive imitations were believed to be by Guercino himself until the imitator’s style was clarified by Prisco Bagni (op. cit., 1985).   

^1. D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, pp. 101-103