Hercules and the Nemean lion, after Peter Paul Rubens, red and black chalk, red wash, heightened with white, on laid paper, 30 x 24,5 cm, mounted, unframed, (Sch)

Literature: Compare : Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Standish D. Lawder, and Charles W. Talbot, Jr., “Drawings from the Clark Art Institute: A catalogue raisonne of the Robert Sterling Clark Collection of European and American Drawings, sixteenth through nineteenth centuries at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamsburg”, I-II, New Haven und London, 1964, I, p. 23–27, No. 20, Fig. I, Plates. 23–24; Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann and Carolyn Logan, Creative Copies. Interpretative Drawings from Michelangelo to Picasso, Exh.Cat.The Drawing Center, New York, 1988, New York and London 1988, p. 83–86, No. 20, with Ill.

The present study is the copy of a detail in a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens in the Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, Inv. 1955–992. A copy of the Rubens drawing by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1624–1721) from the collection of Pierre Mariette is preserved in the Institut Neerlandais, Paris. Another copy from the collection of John P. Watkins Brett was sold between 5th-18th April 1864 at Christie’s, London, Lot 559 (comp. E. Haverkamp-Begemann/ C. Logan 1988, p, 83–86, No. 20). The present drawing may be a copy which was executed in the circle of Watteau at the beginning of the 18th century.