Guercino

Drawn entirely with the brush and brown wash rather than with a pen, and making use of a blue paper that is found in only a handful of drawings by Guercino, the unique Landscape with a volcano is even more difficult to date than are the rest of Guercino's landscapes. The artist never traveled to Naples or Sicily, where he might have seen a volcano; this representation thus must be a fantasy, perhaps inspired by prints. The blue paper has suggested to some that the work was executed shortly after Guercino's trip to Venice in 1618, and it might also be noted that he made use of blue paper for one of the studies connected with the Casino Ludovisi in Rome around 1624. On the whole, though, the brush and wash technique used here is less dense than that in earlier drawings, such as the Shepherds peering into a chasm at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and a date around 1640 is a reasonable suggestion. Other drawings in this wash technique include the St. Francis and an angel playing a violin, which Turner connects with a painting of 1641, and the Bust of a man at the Rijksmuseum, also dated to the 1640s. Given the work's unfamiliar technique, scholars have occasionally questioned the attribution, but it is now generally and rightly accepted as Guercino's work. A distinction should be drawn between this sheet and the wash landscapes later executed by artists of the Gennari family, such as the Landscape with figures at Princeton. Nonetheless, those landscapes may have been inspired by works such as this one, which remained in the workshop long enough to acquire the distinctive mount associated with the Casa Gennari and Bouverie drawings. -- Catalog entry: Guercino : virtuoso draftsman, Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 84.