Rijksmuseum

Object data

black chalk; framing line in brown ink

height 274 mm × width 198 mm

Inscriptions

monogrammed and dated: left of centre, in black chalk, CSL / 1665
inscribed on verso: lower centre, in pencil, in a modern hand, C. Saftleven; lower right, in pencil, illegible annotation (partly cut off)
stamped on verso: lower left corner, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450)
lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right corner, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

watermark: foolscap with seven points, above three balls

Provenance

...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., one of a pair in no. 478 (‘Corneille Saftleven. Garçon jouant de la flûte.- Ruelle de petite ville. Deux dessins à la pierre noire, dont le premier est signé du monogramme et daté: 1665.’), fl. 140, to William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25-26 June 1895, one of a pair in no. 581, with inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4569, fl. 20 for both, to the dealer H.J. Valk for the Vereniging Rembrandt; from whom, fl. 23, to the museum (L. 2228), 1902

Object number: RP-T-1902-A-4570

Entry

As Schatborn correctly noted, the boy depicted here is not actually playing the shawm, but is posing with it.¹ A painting dated two years earlier formerly on the art market, the Allegory of Human Folly,² includes the same sitter with a shawm at far right, but in a slightly different pose, which would suggest the drawing was either after the painting or the drawing is wrongly dated.

The present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4569 were in the collection of William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94) and were sold in one lot to the museum in 1895.³

Gerdien Wuestman, 2001/Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Literature

Jaarverslag Rijksprentenkabinet 1902, p. 26; W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1978, pp. 65, 81 (no. 36, fig. 72); P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 78, 142, no. 89

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2001/C. Mensing, 2020, 'Cornelis Saftleven, _, 1665', in J. Turner (ed.), _(under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200143920

(accessed 13 December 2025 01:45:17).

Seated Boy with a Shawm