Landscape with Shepherds by Moonlight

In their open construction, sweeping rhythms, and fluid pen and brush, Bison’s drawings resemble and sometimes consciously imitate those of the great virtuosi of the past, especially Guercino and the Tiepolos. At the same time, his vague pastoral subjects and exaggeratedly poetic mood betray a fully Romantic temperament. Most of Bison’s many sheets, including another in the Suida-Manning Collection, were finished works of art intended for private collectors. Developed primarily through broad areas of wash, with the white of the paper suggesting the fall of moonlight upon a few important forms, this is an especially attractive sheet.