In 1729, while preparing over sixty drawings for an illustrated 1738 edition of Miguel de Cervantes’s The Ingenious Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–15), the artist John Vanderbank had an adventure himself, fleeing England for France to avoid debtors’ prison. In this scene from the novel, the sleepwalking Quixote, clad in a skimpy nightshirt, wields his sword in a heroic—but entirely imagined—battle with giants. The innkeeper and Quixote’s squire, Sancho Panza, raise their hands in alarm as they realize that the innkeeper’s wineskins have fallen victim to the knight’s swordplay. What Quixote perceives as the blood of giants is actually the inn’s store of red wine, seeping into the ground.
John Vanderbank (British, 1694–1739), Don Quixote Attacking the Wine-Skins in His Sleep, 1729. Brush and brown wash, with white opaque watercolor, over graphite, on paper tinted with a light brown wash. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1909, 1975.17:17.