Man achtervolgt een vrouw in een rivier

458 Man Chasing a Woman in a River (Pan and Syrinx?)

Black chalk, brown and brown-grey wash. Framing line in pen and brown ink. The figures partially indented for transfer. Lined.

143 x 216 mm.

Inscribed with monogram, lower right: H.S. (pen and brown ink).
Inscribed on the mount, lower left: 1620 (pencil); under the drawing f 261 (pencil; 18th-century hand); verso, lower left: f 36.- (pencil).

Provenance: probably J. Hulswit sale, Amsterdam, 28 October 1822 (Lugt 10327), B 13 (`Een boomrijk landschap aan een Water; zeer natuurlijk met oostindische inkt door Herman Swanevelt'), bt. Michaëlis for the Museum (f 18.10).

Inv. 1854: T 54; 1864: P* 70.

Inv. no.: O* 26.

Exhibitions: Paris 1972, no. 67 (repr.).

Bibliography: Scholten 1904, p. 100 (Pan and Syrinx?).


Swanevelt drew and etched several episodes from the Metamorphoses (cf. Hollstein XXIX, pp. 58-63). This drawing, which may represent Pan and Syrinx, is conceivably part of that group (Metamorphoses I, 689). Other representations of the episode by Swanevelt, however, follow the text more closely by showing Pan grabbing hold of the reeds instead of the nymph (cf. etching Hollstein XXIX, p. 62, no. 24, repr.; drawing in the British Museum [Hind 1915-32, IV, p. 66, no. 8] and another in the Uffizi [Kloek 1975, no. 826]). A comparable drawing in the British Museum is entitled Wooded Landscape with River God and Nymph (Hind 1915-32, IV, p. 66, no. 7, repr.).
Presumably Swanevelt drew the present scene in the late 1630s during his last Roman years. Two signed drawings with satyrs and nymphs are comparable; one, dated Roma 1636, was formerly in a Belgian private collection (sale, Paris, Drouot, 28 October 1994, no. 30, repr., erroneously as dated 1655), the other, dated Roma 1639, is in the E.B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento (inv. no. 159; photograph RKD).