Guercino

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Guercino
1591-1666
View of a Walled Town
ca. 1625-1630
Pen and brown ink on paper.
10 1/4 x 16 3/16 inches (260 x 411 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.
I, 100
Notes: 

Guercino's landscape drawings were for the most part autonomous works of art and have been notoriously difficult to date because they cannot be connected to paintings that might serve as benchmarks. Instead, one must rely on comparisons between the pen work of a landscape and that of connected, datable compositional drawings and to a lesser degree, on comparisons with the landscapes occasionally seen in Guercino's paintings. An additional benchmark for these two drawings is the similarly handled Landscape with travelers in the rain in the Uffizi, which has an inscription dating it to 1626.1 These two sheets (I, 100 and I, 101d) also resemble other landscapes that Turner and Mahon have tended to date to the later 1620s due to their relatively dense compositions and prominent foreground features. They are full of anecdotal detail and clever touches of the pen, such as the stipple used to depict the fading frescoes on the façade of the church in cat. 10. As Mahon has noted, a drawing in the Royal Collection has a very similar, if not identical, church. -- Catalog entry: Guercino : virtuoso draftsman, Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 48

Inscription: 

Watermark: Six-pointed star above letter "M" in escutcheon.

Provenance: 
Sir Charles Greville (1762/63-1832), London (L. 549, verso); George Guy Greville, 4th Earl of Warwick (1818-1893), Warwick (L. 2600); probably his sale, Christie's, London, 20-21 May 1896, lot 175 or 176; Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see L. 1509); his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.
Watermark: 
Associated names: 

Greville, Charles, 1762-1832, former owner.
Warwick, George Guy Greville, Earl of, 1818-1893, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1867-1943, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Marciari, John. Guercino : virtuoso draftsman. New York : Morgan Library & Museum, in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019, no. 9, repr.
Mahon 1968b, no. 211; Stone 1991a, 219.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, I, 100, repr.

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