Description
A Genoese artist who worked mostly in Milan, Alessandro Magnasco epitomizes the transition between 17th- and 18th-century art in northern Italy. Rarely did his highly individual style find such expression as in this drawing, in which reddish-brown chalk wash heightened with white approximates the agitated strokes of the heavily applied impasto in his oil paintings.
Provenance
Sold, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, May 24, 1955, lot 131. Otto Wertheimer, Paris [Joachim 1980]. Sold by Charles Slatkin Galleries, New York, to the Art Institute, 1962.
Accession Number
14797
Medium
Brush and brown gouache and brush and brown wash, with traces of brown chalk, heightened with white chalk, over black chalk, on blue laid paper (discolored to pale brownish-gray)
Dimensions
46.6 × 37 cm (18 3/8 × 14 5/8 in.)
Classification
ink or chalk wash
Credit Line
Helen Regenstein Collection