Herman van Swanevelt

As Steland noted, this atmospheric drawing is very close in style to two others by Swanevelt, now in the Uffizi, which are the preparatory studies for two of the artist's prints.¹ One of the Florence drawings is dated 1653, locating it very late in the artist's career, when he was working in Paris, and Steland considers the Perman drawing to date from the same period. 

Swanevelt's drawings from this time are characterised by fine, rather nervous, sometimes zig-zagging pen lines, overlaid with very broad, sweeping grey wash, with which the artist has created a serenely Italianate lighting scheme, inspired, no doubt, by both the light and the art that he had himself encountered in Italy. The precise dates of his southern journey are not documented; he is first actually recorded in Rome only in 1629, but may well already have been there several years earlier, perhaps even before the end of 1623. In 1641 Swanvelt was in Florence, but had returned to his native Woerden by 1643, after which he moved to Paris, where he married in 1644, and remained for most of the rest of his life.

In terms of artistic contacts in Rome, it is very possible that Swanevelt personally encountered Paul Bril, Cornelis Poelenburch, Bartholomeus Breenbergh and Claude Lorrain, and in any case the works of all these luminaries were of considerable influence on his developing style as a draughtsman.  

1. Steland, op. cit., cats. Z 1, 17 A & B