Lot 46. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna), A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background; Red chalk; bears old numbering in pen and brown ink: 45, 207 by 297 mm; 8¼ by 11¾ in. Estimate 30,000 — 40,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

Provenance: Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (L.1391, his attribution on the verso in black chalk Jon. Franz Barbieri);
sale, London, Christie's, 7 July 1981, lot 155 (as Attributed to Aureliano Milani),
purchased by a European private collector,
by inheritance to the present owner 

Exhibited: Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, 1591-1666, I Disegni (catalogue by Sir Denis Mahon), 1992, p. 288, no. 185, reproduced

Literature: P. Bagni, Il Guercino e il suo Falsario, I Disegni di Paesaggio, Bologna 1985, p. 54, no. 35, reproduced

Notes: This is an extremely rare landscape by Guercino executed in red chalk.  Only two other examples of landscapes by the artist in this medium are known, one in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle,1 the other formerly on the art market.2  In the exhibition catalogue of 1992, Sir Denis Mahon observed that the present sheet, even more than the one at Windsor, conveyed all the characteristics of the artist's draftsmanship, and he also stressed the rarity of the use of this medium in Guercino's landscapes.  Comparing these two drawings, the present one in fact appears more vigorously drawn, yet also subtle in the variety achieved with the red chalk, a delicate medium that the artist used so often for his figures and compositional drawings, throughout his career.  It is in fact surprising how rarely Guercino made use of red chalk for his landscape drawings, a genre which he seems to have explored mainly for his own diversion. 

Generally executed in pen and ink, with varying degrees of finish (see also lots 25 and 26), these landscapes are never related to a painting; Guercino must have found this exercise both interesting and challenging, as he produced a great number of drawings of this type during the course of his life.

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

2. Sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 2003, lot 35 (A landscape with a tree and two travellers near a pond in the foreground, and distant buildings behind)

Sotheby's. Old Master Drawings, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 10:00 AM