Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

In this typical landscape by Guercino, with figures engaged in everyday activities, the central figure is a seated man wearing a hat, who fishes from a tree-lined river bank. The much smaller figures on the bridge and along the road leading to the town appear walking or in conversation.  

Throughout his career, Guercino clearly enjoyed making drawings of landscapes, purely for his own pleasure. Mostly drawn in pen and brown ink, these drawings were not used in the preparation of any other works. The quantity of these "exercises'' that have survived are testimony to the artist's fascination with the subject, his infinite imagination and his pleasure in the challenges offered by the making of these continuous variations on the landscape theme. 

The fisherman in the foreground is very much a recurring motif. As always in these landscapes the space is shaped with the subtle and decisive use of light, creating the different planes and suggesting depth. The artist cleverly exploits the luminosity of the white paper in contrast with the variation of thickness and pressure in the strokes of the pen.