Riverside Scene

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by an Anonymous artist. The drawing shows the bank of a river with nine figures engaged in leisure activities and sharing a picnic. The people are in contemporary dress and the two on the left are playing with a dog. There is a house to the right, out of the door of which is coming a man, raising a goblet upwards. A tall tree is beside this building. Beyond the scene is the river itself with two tall ships and a sailing boat. There are two figures walking into the water in the left middle ground. Text in the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 23 ANONYMOUS RIVERSIDE SCENE Collection of Mr. Max J. Bonn. 32.5 x 20.7 cm. (12 3/4 x 8 3/16 in.). Pen and bistre, and indian ink wash slightly touched with red chalk, and washed with various tints of water-colour (yellow, green, faitn purple and red). A group composed of three ladies, a serving-woman carrying a tray, and a girl teaching a spaniel to beg, are seated on the grassy bank of a broad river. Two gentleman stand on the r. addressing the ladies, and above their heads a man is seen stretching out a jug from the window of an inn beside the large tree. Moored near the bank are two sailing boats, from one of which the party had probably disembarked. A windmill and a church are seen on the further bank. The style of draughtmanship, with its curious affections in line, is like that of certain Dutch and Frenchartists who were working in England in the early part of the eighteenth century, i. e. Marcellus Laroon the younger, Philippe Mercier, and L. P. Boitard - of the last in particular. Details of costume, however (e. g. the 'Commode' worn by the ladies in their head-dresses), point to a date about 1700, and seem to exclude any of the artists mentioned. We can only conjecture that the drawing is the work of some foreign artist working in England about the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A. M. H."