Object data
reed pen and brown ink, with some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or wet brush, on paper toned with a light brown wash; framing line in brown ink
height 122 mm × width 212 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Amsterdam, c. 1660
reed pen and brown ink, with some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or wet brush, on paper toned with a light brown wash; framing line in brown ink
height 122 mm × width 212 mm
inscribed on verso: centre, in pencil, 8; lower centre, in a seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink, 5 [changed to 6] stux Leeuwen / f 3. – g; lower centre, in pencil (with the no. of the 1895 Pitcairn Knowles sale), 530; centre right, in a seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink, 26 stux van / rembrand / f 20 – gulden; below that, in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no., twice), deGr 1202 / 1202
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643); lower centre (with the sheet turned upside down), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Watermark: None
Folds, upper right
...; ? sale, François van Harencarspel Eckhardt (1784-1842, Assen) et al. [section ‘heirs of Van Loon’, possibly Willem van Loon (1707-83), Amsterdam], Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 15 August 1842 sqq., Album B, no. 13 (‘Een liggende leeuw, met de pen, door Rembrandt’), with no. 12, fl. 10, or no. 14 (‘Een dito [liggende Leeuw], met bruine inkt, door denzelven [Rembrandt]’), fl. 3, to his son, Jonkheer Pieter van Loon (1801-73);1 his wife, Theodora Johanna van Loon-Calkoen (1803-79), Utrecht;2 ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller & Co.), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 530 (‘Etude d’un lion, couhé et tourné vers a droit. [...] Hauteur 12, largeur 21 cent.’), fl. 510, to Hendrik Jacobus Valk (1863-1940), Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;3 from whom, fl. 586.50, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901
Object number: RP-T-1901-A-4524
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
When artists wanted to portray exotic animals in biblical or other scenes, they often had to rely on printed or drawn models by colleagues or earlier artists. Only rarely were they fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study and draw such wild live animals themselves. Willem Goeree (1635-1711), in his instruction manual entitled Inleydinge tot de practijck der alghemeene schilder-konst (1670), urged artists not to miss such opportunities: ‘It is of great importance to seize the chance to see the rarities, such as lions, tigers, bears, elephants, camels and such beasts as one seldom sets eyes upon, and which one nonetheless needs to use in one’s inventions from time to time.’4
We know that wild animals and birds brought by sailors from distant countries were often exhibited at fairs and markets,5 and that the Dutch East India Company had stables in which these live animals were kept. There were also a few menageries, such as the one owned by Prince Frederick Henry of Orange in Honselaarsdijk near The Hague, one of the oldest zoos in the Netherlands. In addition, exotic species arrived from abroad as taxidermied specimens or were stuffed after their death in the Netherlands, and these preserved examples were copied by artists. Rembrandt, for example, had a stuffed bird of paradise in his collection of curiosities, and he made a drawing of it, now in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. RF 4687),6 as if it were still alive. As the 1656 bankruptcy inventory shows, he kept his sketches of animals drawn from life in an album.7 We do not know if this album contained animal studies of both domestic and wild creatures, but there are surviving drawings by him of domestic animals such as pigs, dogs, horses (see inv. no. RP-T-1961-77) and cows (see inv. no. RP-T-1930-59), as well as exotic animals such as camels, elephants and – most numerous of all – lions.
Rembrandt probably sketched lions together with his students, since many such studies formerly attributed to him are now considered to be the work of pupils or followers (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1961-81, RP-T-1901-A-4525, RP-T-1930-58, RP-T-1889-A-2044 and RP-T-1948-408(R) and RP-T-1948-408(V).8 With the experience he had in drawing from life, he was also able to sketch these animals from memory and to place them in all kinds of narrative painted and etched scenes. A good example are the horses and the lion in The Concord of the State in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. 1717 (OK)),9 which Rembrandt painted in the early 1640s. If the lion in this painting is compared to the one in the earlier etching of St Jerome as a Hermit, Reading in the Wilderness, dated 1634 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-49),10 it is clear that the animal in the print, which is not nearly as well characterized, must have been copied from a model rather than based on a study from life.
The present sketch, by contrast, must have been made from life. In it, Rembrandt rendered the lion directly and confidently with broad strokes. Among his surviving drawings of lions, this is the only one executed with the reed pen. Very little ink was used for the nose and forehead because the light is falling on that area. The hind legs are drawn with a great flourish; the mane was rendered with broad lines in various tonalities, and hatching with a dry pen was used for the shadow above the back and forelegs. By rubbing the ink lightly with a ‘stained finger’, as it was called by Van Hoogstraten,11 a slightly darker tone between the lines of hatching on the leg was created. The fact that the tail is cut off shows that the sheet of paper used to be larger.
There are notes on the back of the drawing that give some idea of its relative value over the years. The oldest inscription, dating from the seventeenth century, states that 26 drawings by Rembrandt were sold for 20 guilders. This sentence was crossed out later, and in a different handwriting from the same century we read that five drawings of lions (there were initially six) cost 3 guilders. In the seventeenth century, drawings were almost always sold in large groups, usually in albums. Later the groups became smaller, until finally, during the course of the eighteenth century, drawings came to be sold individually. Our lion drawing first cost 75 cents, then 60 cents, and in the 1895 auction of W. Pitcairn Knowles it fetched the highest price of all the drawings sold: 510 guilders. The broad drawing style was considered to be very expressive at the time, as can be inferred from the description in the auction catalogue: ‘C’est bien un de ces lions dessinis avec passion...’
The drawing is generally dated after circa 1660, rather late in Rembrandt’s career. This means that it could not have been part of the album of animals drawn from life that is mentioned in the 1656 inventory.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1202; M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 32 (1653); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1216 (c. 1660-62); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. The Hague 1985, no. 54, with earlier literature; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 48 and 50, fig. 44; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 88, under no. 22; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, coll. cat. 3 vols., Cologne and elsewhere 2011, pp. 462-63, under no. 856, n. 5; J. Bikker et al. Late Rembrandt, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), 2014-15, pp. 59, 60, 307, no. 7.
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Reclining Lion with Fodder, Amsterdam, c. 1660', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28573
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