Lion at Rest and Sketch of its Hind Quarters

Entry

The animals have been drawn with fine lines and evenly spaced pen hatching. The contours are repeated in brush and a patchy wash has been added. There are a few evenly spaced lines to the right of the lion and under his forepaw where the artist probably tried out his brush. The hard contours and regular hatching give the drawing a linear quality. The forms have little plasticity, and the expression of the lion’s fur is not convincing.

In the Recueil de Lions of 1729 by Bernard Picart (1637-1733), there is a print, in reverse, of a lion in the same position (no. C 6; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-51.743).⁵ The rear legs are more clearly depicted in the print, and to judge by the differences it is not at all clear whether the museum’s drawing was the model for this print. Traces of a sketch in graphite under the drawing’s penwork indicate that this is a copy. The Rijkprentenkabinet preserves a copy by Picart of a drawing of Christ and his Disciples (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2284) in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 5279), which Picart believed to be by Rembrandt, but which is now considered to be by Rembrandt’s pupil Arent de Gelder (1645-1727).⁶ Picart’s copy of Christ and his Disciples, drawn in red, shares a number of stylistic qualities with the present drawing of a lion, such as the wide hatching and the contours repeated with the brush. Based on these analogies, it might be assumed that Picart himself drew the present sheet, but it also could have been made by a different copyist who based himself on the same original drawing as Picart did. Picart himself also made drawings of lion, and included them in his Recueil, alongside prints of lions after Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Rembrandt, and Charles Le Brun (1619-1690).

Eighteen of the prints in the Recueil are based on drawings attributed to Rembrandt,⁷ which Picart himself copied. Among Picart’s copies are sheets in the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA (inv. no. 1965.511);⁸ the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 1066 (PK)) and the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin (inv. no. 1275 Hz).⁹ However, while most of the many drawings of lions that correspond to Picart’s prints are in reverse, only a few of these drawings can be convincingly attributed to Rembrandt himself.¹⁰ The other drawings fall into so many categories that it is difficult to determine whether they are copies after Rembrandt, drawings by students or copies after them, or drawings by much later followers. There is no known original drawing by Rembrandt of the present lion. It is also not clear whether the prototype was by Rembrandt, a student, or a follower. Among the pupils to whom drawings of lions have been attributed is Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), to whom Broos assigned a sheet in the Amsterdam Museum (inv. no. TA 10286).¹¹ On the basis of the chalk sketch under that drawing, it is likely that it, too, is a copy.

Peter Schatborn, 2018