Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with brown and grey wash; framing line in brown ink

height 168 mm × width 241 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower centre, in an old hand, in brown ink, R
inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, No 1; lower centre (with the 1816 Roscoe sale no.), roscoes colln / no 607; below this (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1250; lower right, by Hofstede de Groot, f. sorsa
stamped on verso: centre right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Brown stains; light foxing throughout¹

Provenance

...; sale, William Roscoe (1753-1831, Liverpool), Liverpool (Winstanley), 23 (26) September 1816 sqq., no. 607 (‘Six, by or in the manner of Rembrandt’), £ 0.14.0, to the dealer Stanley, London;² ...; sale, Charles-Philippe, Marquis de Chennevières-Pointel (1820-99, Paris) and Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913, Edinburgh and London), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 November 1882 sqq., no. 169, as Rembrandt, fl. 10;³ ...; purchased from Paul Mathey (1844-1929), Paris, as Rembrandt, with three other drawings, through the mediation of the dealer P. Roblin, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1903;⁴ by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-5

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

Entry

In front of the entrance to a house, Jacob is being shown his son Joseph’s blood-stained coat (Genesis 37:31-33). After his jealous brothers sold Joseph into slavery, he was taken away to Egypt. The brothers then dipped his tunic in the blood of a slaughtered kid and sent someone to bring it to their father and to claim: ‘This we have found; see whether now it is your son’s robe or not.’ Jacob recognized it and said: ‘It is my son’s robe; a wild beast has devoured him.’ The drawing depicts the terrible moment when Jacob first believes that Joseph has been killed. His youngest son, Benjamin, is kneeling next to him, and his wife, Rachel, is standing behind a Dutch door. One man is telling the story, while another man, seen from the rear, watches Jacob’s reaction.

The composition seems to have been influenced by a painting of the subject, dated 1618, by the Pre-Rembrandtist Jan Pynas (1581/82-1631), now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. 00-5588),⁵ especially the motif of the man at left seen from behind and the figure of the young Benjamin next to his father’s knees.⁶ Benjamin’s close proximity to his devoted father is a reference to a later event, when the brothers took the small boy with them to Egypt after Joseph (unrecognized by his brothers) took one of them hostage and demanded Benjamin as ransom (see inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4518). The subject of Joseph sold into slavery and related episodes, such as the blood-stained coat shown to Jacob, clearly appealed to Rembrandt and the Pre-Rembrandtists.⁷ For instance, in an etching of Jacob Being Shown Joseph’s Blood-stained Coat from the beginning of the Amsterdam period (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-77),⁸ Rembrandt also depicted Jacob, his wife and the two messengers by the entrance to a house. A drawing by him in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, datable circa 1655-56 (inv. no. R 38 (PK)),⁹ is more closely related to Pynas’s painting. Another Pre-Rembrandtist, Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert (1591-1655), also drew and painted this subject on several occasions, such as a drawing in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (inv. no. 1829),¹⁰ which is a study for a painting in the Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi, Lódz (inv. no. MS/SO/M/80).¹¹

The Amsterdam drawing is in rather poor condition. When a former lining was being removed, water probably came into contact with the paper, causing some of the ink to bleed. This has increased the contrast in a manner not originally intended. The handling of line is rather hesitant and uncertain, which, together with the excessive contrasts, gives the drawing an uneven quality. Whereas Rembrandt always used lighting very precisely, the illumination of this scene is not clearly expressed.

The drawing was originally attributed to a pupil;¹² it was subsequently accepted as autograph by Benesch, only later to be reattributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) by Sumowski. This attribution is not convincing since the draughtsmanship is based on the style practised by Rembrandt in the 1650s, whereas Van Hoogstraten had been in the studio in the 1640s.

Jacob Being Shown Joseph’s Blood-stained Coat belongs to a coherent group of school drawings from circa 1650, a group that also includes the museum’s drawings of Jonathan Saying Farewell to David (inv. no. RP-T-1930-11) and Christ Presented to the People by Pilate (inv. no. RP-T-1961-84).¹³ This group can now be attributed to Carel van Savoyen.¹⁴ Characteristic of Savoyen’s draughtsmanship are the irregular pen lines in varying widths (some thin, some thicker) and the multi-directional hatching. Not only is lighting poorly conceived, but space is only summarily indicated, as can be seen in the present sheet and the Christ Presented to the People by Pilate.

There is an untraced variant of this composition, probably made by another artist, in which the young Benjamin is not depicted and there are two women instead of one,¹⁵ which in the 1920s was in the collection of the widow Galippe,¹⁶ and later in that of Jacques August Boussac, Paris.¹⁷

Peter Schatborn, 2018

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1250 (as Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 101 (as Rembrandt, c. 1655); F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre. Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, III: École hollandaise: Rembrandt, ses élèves, ses imitateurs, ses copistes, coll. cat. Paris 1933, pp. 48-49, under no. 1261 (as pupil); 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. 68 (as Rembrandt, c. 1655-56); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 971 (as Rembrandt, c. 1655); Sumowski, Drawings, V (1981), no. 1210* (as Samuel van Hoogstraten, early 1650s); 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. 70 (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650), with earlier literature; J. Garff, Drawings by Rembrandt and other 17th-century Dutch Artists in the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Copenhagen 1996, pp. 36, 42; C. Dittrich and T. Ketelsen et al., Rembrandt: Die Dresdener Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett) 2004, under no. 31, p. 97, n. 7 (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650); P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 246, cat.nr. 97

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'attributed to Carel van Savoyen, Jacob Being Shown Joseph’s Blood-stained Coat, Amsterdam, c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28590

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