Attributed to Adriaen de Vries

John Barnard (d.1784), London (L.1419 and L.1420);

Thomas Banks (1735-1805), London (L.2423);

bears unidentified collector's mark (initials DP in monogram, L.3520)

This intriguing drawing of a reclining female nude seen from behind, a violin by her leg, clearly relates in some way to a sculpted work, possibly made as part of an architectural project, or even a structure such as a fountain. 

The form of the body is distinctly Mannerist, and the drawing technique is highly individual, combining firm outlines in pen and ink with carefully modulated shading built up through a series of delicate parallel strokes of wash, applied with the point of the brush. An early observer clearly saw the drawing as a product of the School of Fontainebleau, inscribing it with an attribution to ‘Franc^o  Bologna’, (i.e. Primaticcio), but the closest parallels in terms of technique and handling actually seem to be found in the rare drawings of the great Prague School sculptor, Adriaen de Vries. In a drawing such as De Vries’s Hercules Resting on a Club, in Chicago, the pen outlines are very similar to those in the present drawing, and the approach to shading through hatching, though there in chalk rather than wash, is also very comparable.¹ Also relevant in this context is the splendid drawing, in Prague, of Hercules pomarius, where the outlines are again similarly handled, and the form is shaped through hatched and striated strokes of the pen, and of brush and white heightening.

Given that there are perhaps only a dozen surviving drawings by De Vries, which vary significantly in date and handling², the absence of any totally comparable works by the artist should come as no surprise, but all the same, both the spirit and the technique seen here, as well as the type of sculptural work depicted, do suggest that an attribution to De Vries should be seriously considered.

^1.The Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1922.3894; F. Scholten et al., Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626, Imperial sculptor, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, and Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999-2000, pp. 264-5, cat. 53   

^2.T. DaCosta Kaufmann, 'The drawings of Adriaen de Vries and their place in the history of sculptors' drawings,' in Adriaen de Vries, exh. cat., op. cit., pp. 84-89