Guercino

This is one of a number of landscape drawings by Guercino showing activities along coasts, bays, and rivers. Like many of these drawings, the River landscape with bathers trades some of the densest pen work of the earlier landscapes for a lighter touch and a more open, atmospheric air, while maintaining much of the anecdotal detail that animates the scenes. The bathers seen here might be compared with those in several earlier drawings, including the Landscape with three bathers at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Bathers: a youth dressing under a tree, and a man swimming in a private collection. A Landscape with a river at Windsor, likewise showing swimmers, affords an even closer comparison. Swimming was evidently a regular summer pastime in Cento, and the subject must have appealed to Guercino, for he also included it in the early mural paintings at the Casa Pannini. Bagni suggests that the landscape depicted in the Morgan drawing shows the river Reno at Cento, with Pieve di Cento seen in the distance at left. Dating of these landscapes remains a challenge, but the tendency has been to place works like the present drawing and some of its closest comparisons--which include the Landscape with a waterfall in Washington, the Landscape with a church beside a lake with boats in Princeton, and the Landscape with a view of a fortified port at the Getty--in the mid-1630s. -- Catalog entry: Guercino : virtuoso draftsman, Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 66.