Day and Faber - Picture page

Jacob Jordaens

Antwerp 1593 – 1678 Antwerp

Christ walking on the water

pen and brown ink, grey wash, heightened with white, inscribed on the mount lower left: 'Jordaens'

156 x 282 mm.

Provenance

Addison Francis Baker-Cresswell (1874-1921), Cresswell and Hadston, Northumberland; his gift to Dorothy Winkworth, mother of Mary Winkworth, later Mrs. G. W. Wrangham (ca. 1903-1933), London and Hatfield; by descent in a private collection, Northumberland until December 2005

Literature

K.T. Parker, Some Drawings by Rubens and his School in the Collection of Mrs G.W. Wrangham, Old Master Drawings, June 1928, p. 6, footnote 3

A drawing by Jacob Jordeans of an attractive subject, it shows the artist at his most fluent in his description of movement and composition. The subject does not appear in any other drawings by him. While his drawing style does not change very much after his earliest period, the mastery of the way he relates the figures to each other suggests that it was an idea that he considered in the 1640’s, when after the death of Rubens in 1640, he became the foremost living Flemish painter.

Jordaens produced two large paintings of 'The Apostle Peter finding the tribute money in the fish’s mouth' (Rijksmuseum and Kunstmuseet, Sweden), which have a similar strong horizontal composition. It appears likely that this finished drawing was an idea for a painting, which was never realized.