FIGURES WALKING PAST A RIVER WITH DISTANT HOUSES
Bears numbering in pencil verso
Pen & sepia ink with grey washes, heightened with bodycolour, on laid paper
18.5 x 26cm [mounted & unframed]
 
 
The present work is an excellent example of Zuccarelli's distinctive palette and "mottled 'tortoise-shell' wash" [1], the latter of which may have inspired Gainsborough's landscape drawings in part. The application of white bodycolour in small 'clumps' and all around the sheet is also a tell-tale sign of the Anglo-Tuscan transplant's hand. For comparable works, see those in the British Museum (e.g. acc. no. PP,5.147), the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt (acc. no. 507 Z) and the Morgan Museum & Library, New York (acc. no. 1983.66).
 
 
Notes:
[1] Cf. cat. note for Italian Landscape with Fishermen, in Gainsborough and Reynolds in the BM (ed. Timothy Clifford et. al.), Gainsborough and Reynolds in the BM', London (1978), cat. no. 61