Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

The artist's neph­ews, Benedetto (1633-1715) and Cesare Gennari (1637-1688),

the 'Casa Gennari', Bologna;

by descent to Carlo Gennari, Bologna (1712-1790);

probably Francesco Forni, Bologna;

acquired, probably circa 1745, by John Bouverie (1723-1750), East Betchworth, Surrey, (L.325);

by descent to his sister, Anne Bouverie (d. 1757), London;

by descent to her son, Christopher Hervey (d. 1786), East Betchworth, Surrey;

by inheritance to his aunt, Elizabeth Bouverie (d. 1798), Barham Court, Teston, Kent,

bequeathed to Sir Charles Middleton (1726-1813), later Lord Barham, Barham Court and Teston, Kent,

by descent to Sir Gerard Noel Edwards (1759-1838), later Noel, 2^nd Lord Barham, Exton Park, Oakham, Rutland,

by descent to Charles Noel (1781-1866), later 1^st Earl of Gainsborough, Exton Park, Oakham, Rutland,

sale, London, Christie's, 20 July 1859, lot 83, to Hogarth;

Private collection,

sale, New York, Christie's, 12 January 1995, lot 25;

with Thomas Williams and W.M. Brady & Co., Inc., New York, Old Master Drawings, 1995, no. 35,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 30 (entry by Anne Varick Lauder);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 34

An extraordinary draftsman with a more varied range of surviving drawings than any of his contemporaries, Guercino adopted different techniques for different types of drawings and at different times in his career, but always showed enormous understanding for his media, and a natural intuition for an elegant mise-en-page.

This outstanding drawing from the Nixon collection is a rare example of its genre: a portrait of a beggar, certainly done from life, but dignified and in no way caricatural. Indeed, Guercino’s sometimes slightly critical attitude when observing the human condition at times led to amusing, somewhat mocking representations of ordinary people, but this is instead a genuinely sympathetic portrayal of a dishevelled bearded man seen holding out his cap with one hand and clasping his string of rosary beads with the other.

Bold and pictorial in its execution, it is a work of art in his own right. The figure, occupying almost the entirety of this large sheet, is seen three-quarters length, almost in profile. In Guercino’s subtle use of this type of modified black chalk – in the past described as 'oiled chalk or charcoal'¹ – a medium most often seen in his early drawings of nudes, we best understand the artist’s talent for rendering contrasts of light and deep shadow, and his extreme sensibility for the use of colors, so innovative and striking in his early painted works. Equally, in the present sheet the tonal variations created by this smoky and dense modified chalk, with stumping, in combination with subtle touches of white chalk, are witnesses to the artist’s dexterity and his natural and effective understanding of the use of light to animate the image. In fact, the figure comes to life in front of the viewer, in a way that few artists can achieve.

Guercino’s biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693) describes, in the Felsina pittrice, that the artist was of a compassionate and charitable nature, writing that he was ‘amatore dei Poveri, che sempre mai avevaintorno quando usciva di Casa, onde pareva il padre di essi; e si prendeva gusto discorrer con loro’ (‘lover of the poor, who were often around him when he went out of his house, so that he could have been mistaken for their father; he enjoyed conversing with them’).² Most of Guercino’s drawings of this type from life were probably, according to Sir Denis Mahon, made in Cento, the artist’s native city, rather than during the later period when he lived in Bologna.³ The Nixon drawing must date from around 1620, before the artist's first visit to Rome in the spring of 1621, and it is a grand and impressive example of Guercino's genre drawings, which, unlike his preparatory studies for paintings, were conceived spontaneously and informally, as independent studies. Very possibly, genre themes occupied Guercino throughout his career, though sheets like the present one are rare. A study of similar subject, size, and technique, and with the same distinguished provenance from the Gennari family and Bouverie collections, is, however, in the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.⁴ That drawing, formerly in the Janos Scholz Collection, represents a beggar holding a broken jug, and it must date from the same period as the Nixon drawing.

In its monumentality and elaborate finish the present large study seems to embody a display of 'bravura' and talent, similarly to the artist's endless variety of elaborate landscape drawings, purely done for his own enjoyment and to satisfy his imagination. In the observation of everyday life, Guercino was following an established Bolognese tradition and especially showing his admiration for the Carracci, and more specifically, when considering his genre scenes, Annibale’s great ability in the portrayal of such subjects. As Anne Varick Lauder observed in the Morgan exhibition catalogue, though Guercino did not attend the Carracci Academy, founded in Bologna around 1582 by the brothers Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609) and their cousin Ludovico (1555-1619), his admiration of Annibale's work extended to the depictions of ambulant tradesmen in the popular print series known as Le Arti di Bologna, first published in Rome in 1646, well after Annibale's death.⁵ The series consists of eighty prints by Simon Guillain, based on drawings by Annibale dating from the mid-1580s.⁶ Pointing out that the beggar in the present drawing bears a striking resemblance to the cap seller appearing on plate 39, Lauder concludes that Guercino must have known this celebrated series before it actually appeared in print.⁷

The outstanding provenance of the Nixon drawing can be traced directly to the artist's family. At the time of Guercino's death in 1666, the majority of his drawings were still in his possession (he was notoriously protective of his works on paper). These then passed to his family and immediate heirs, his nephews Benedetto and Cesare Gennari (the sons of his sister, Lucia Barbieri, and her husband, Ercole Gennari), who regarded their uncle's work with due veneration. By the mid-eighteenth century the collection passed to Cesare's grandson Carlo Gennari (1712-1790), who began to sell it off, and around 1745 about eight hundred of the finest drawings were acquired by the English collector John Bouverie (1723-1750) – probably via the Bolognese dealer Francesco Forni. Bouverie’s own heirs sold a significant share of the holdings in the years that followed; some four hundred of these are now preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The present example, however, is among the relatively few drawings (117) that remained in the possession of Bouverie's descendants until the works were dispersed at auction in 1859.⁸

Guercino professed his artistic education to be mostly of his own teaching, and based upon his dedication to drawing. He was undoubtedly inspired by some Emilian artists, but his devotion to the work of Ludovico Carracci was clearly the most important inspiration for the young master. Several sources record Guercino's admiration for Ludovico's altarpiece, The Holy Family with St. Francis and Donors, painted in 1591 for the Piombini family chapel in the church of the Cappuccini, Cento, and now in that city’s Museo Civico. He particularly admired Lodovico's compositions, and bold use of chiaroscuro.

Although it is an early work, in the monumental Nixon study of a beggar, we can already admire the work of an accomplished master, reassured in his own talents; it is a drawing in which the artist masters the subtle rendering of light with rapidity of touch and technical virtuosity, succeeding brilliantly in balancing chiaroscuro and boldness of execution.

1. Although the medium of this drawing by the young Guercino has often been described as "oiled" black chalk or charcoal, a technical study by Marjorie M. Shelley (Department of Paper Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, report dated 19 May 2004) demonstrated that there is no evidence of oil, or of the telltale sign of haloing occurring with oil-containing materials; the intense blackness of the chalk seems to be due solely to the gum solution. Guercino rarely seems to have used this modified black chalk technique after the mid-1620s.

2. Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Vite dei Pittori Bolognesi, ed. Alfa, Bologna 1971, p. 564

3. Denis Mahon & Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, p. 110

4. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, inv. 1979.7; D. Stone, Guercino. Master Draftsman, Bologna 1991, 178-179, no. 77, reproduced

5. See Alessandro Marchi, 'Le Arti che vanno per Via', in Guercino, Racconti di paese: il paesaggio e la scena popolare neiluoghi e nell'epoca di Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, (ed. Massimo Pulini), Cento 2001, pp. 98-105. In addition, Lauder observes that Guercino may also have known Rembrandt's drawings and prints of beggars and tradesmen. He once remarked that Rembrandt prints 'are very beautiful in execution, engraved with good taste and done in a fine manner I sincerely esteem him as a great artist" (letter to Sicilian nobleman Don Antonio Ruffo); see New York and Washington 2007, loc. cit., note 4

6. Only one of Annibale's original drawings for the series is known: 'Lo Spazzacamino' (a chimney-sweep), in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, inv. no. D.4784; for an image see C. Robertson and C. Whistler, Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections, Oxford and London 1996-97, pp. 98-99, no. 52, reproduced

7. Exhibited, loc. cit., fig. 1

8. For more information on Bouverie's acquisition see N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, exh. cat., London, British Museum, 1991, pp. 21-27; Turner, 'John Bouverie as a collector of Drawings', The Burlington Magazine, February 1994, pp. 90-99