Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, on paper toned with light brown wash

height 135 mm × width 68 mm

Inscriptions

stamped: lower left, with the mark of Desperet (L. 721; effaced); lower right, with the mark of Mayor (L. 2799; effaced)
inscribed on verso, in pencil: upper right, by Hofstede de Groot, f zebenje; centre, ex. collection / Chevr. Claussin; below this, 219; next to this, Coll. desperet / W. Mayor; lower centre, Rembrandt; below this (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1282
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Heyl zu Herrnsheim (L. 2879); lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Light foxing throughout¹

Provenance

...; collection Chevalier Ignace-Joseph de Claussin (c. 1795/96-1844), Paris and London;² ...; collection Étienne Desperet (1804-65), Lyon (L. 721); his sale, Paris (L. Clement), 7 (8) June 1865 sqq., no. 278, as Rembrandt, with one other drawing, 65 frs. for both, to William Mayor (? - 1874), London (L. 2799, effaced);³ ...; collection Freiherr Max von Heyl zu Herrnsheim (1844-1925), Darmstadt (L. 2870); his sale, Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 25 May 1903 sqq., no. 240, DM 205, to Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague;⁴ by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-36

Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague

Entry

An old man in a soft, high hat is leaning with both hands on a stick, while turning to the left. The sketch has been attributed to Rembrandt, but it has also been considered to be a copy, the work of the pupil Willem de Poorter (1608-in or after 1649/51) or the work of an unknown follower. The attribution to Rembrandt is based primarily on a comparison with a figure at the far right of the drawing of Three Sketches of a Man on Crutches and a Woman in the British Museum, London (inv. no. Gg,2.252).⁵ That comparison, however, shows that even though there are common stylistic elements, the old man in the museum’s drawing lacks the sureness of touch evident in the London sketch.

The high hat and the profile are rendered very convincingly, but there is no transition from the chin to the neck, and the shapes and creases in the arms are so loosely executed that they only partially suggest the forms under the clothing. This applies even more to the legs and feet: the figure does not stand firmly on the ground (as Rembrandt’s figures always do), even though the artist tried to improve matters by drawing the left foot a second time. The shape and the pose of the hands leaning on the cane are also unconvincing. The figure in the London drawing does not have these faults. There the fine hatching is more evenly applied, whereas in the museum’s drawing the funnel-shaped shading, instead of creating a feeling of shadow and plasticity, makes the coat hanging over the leg seem flat. The position of the hand on the cane may have been borrowed from one of Rembrandt’s early prints of beggars (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-379 or RP-P-OB-380).⁶

Rembrandt used paper toned with a light brown wash during the second half of the 1630s (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1984-119 and RP-T-1930-37), the same period to which the London drawing and the museum’s drawing are usually dated. The subtle differences between the autograph sketches and the present sheet show how accurately pupils and followers could copy Rembrandt’s style. A careful comparison, however, reveals a fundamental difference in quality in the compositions and their effects.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1282 (as Rembrandt); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, no. 82 (as follower of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, ‘Bemerkungen zu Otto Benesch, “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” I’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 6 (1956-57), no. 4, p. 260 (as Willem de Poorter); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 328 (as Rembrandt, c. 1636-37); 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. Amsterdam 1985, no. 104, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 328

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'school of Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man Leaning on a Stick, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28625

(accessed 14 November 2024 20:52:10).