A Waterfall in Switzerland (near Lausanne?) with a Resting Wayfarer

Jan Hackaert

ca. 1655 or after · Pen and brown ink, brush and gray ink; framing line in pen and brown ink, probably by the artist · Drawings and Prints

This view of a waterfall is one of numerous drawings Hackaert produced during, or just after, his travels in Switzerland between 1653 and 1656. (An inscription, probably added in the eighteenth century, locates the scene near Lausanne.) Short vertical strokes describe the cascading water. Two figures—one seated in the foreground and another climbing the hill above—provide a sense of scale. Hackaert may well have produced the drawing for a collector. Other examples of Hackaert’s Swiss views were acquired by Laurens van der Hem (1621-1678) and incorporated into the collector's extraordinary atlas preserved in the Österreichhische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

Artist

Jan Hackaert

Date

ca. 1655 or after

Medium

Pen and brown ink, brush and gray ink; framing line in pen and brown ink, probably by the artist

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Frits and Rita Markus Fund, 2014