Object data
pen and brown ink, with brown wash and opaque white, on paper toned with a light brown wash; framing line in brown ink
height 177 mm × width 241 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Bedroom with Saskia in Bed
Amsterdam, c. 1638
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Provenance
...; collection Graaf Jan Pieter van Suchtelen (1751-1836), St Petersburg (L. 2332); ? his sale, Paris (Delbergue-Cormont), 4 June 1862, no. 132 (‘P. Rembrandt. Tête d’homme, etc. Très-jolis dessins à la pierre noire et lavis. (Même collection [Collection du comte Suchtelen]).’); ...; collection Remigius Adrianus Haanen [van Haanen] (1812-94), Vienna;1 ? his student Hermine Lang-Laris (1842-1913), Munich; from whom purchased, with nine other drawings, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1900;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-53
Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
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.
Entry
In a bedroom, Rembrandt’s wife, Saskia, is sitting up in her four-poster bed, with the heavy curtains drawn apart. There is a small table next to the bed with a bowl (chamber pot?), a cup or a jug, and in the wall niche at the left is an object that is probably a jug or a vase. There is a millinery box (?) on the long bench against the far wall at the right. That Saskia, who looks wan, is pregnant is suggested by the nursing couch on the floor beside the bed. This type of ‘chair-bed’, usually made of wicker, had a cushion or pillow on which the woman was supported as she nursed the baby, with her legs extended in front of her.3 Light is coming in from the right, and the scene is boldly drawn and extensively washed with the brush. The washes have been applied very carefully, Rembrandt having ensured that there was always only a small amount of ink on his brush so that the strokes would remain transparent.
The sheet belongs to a group of drawings of Saskia in bed, probably made when she was expecting a child. A drawing in the Frits Lugt Collection in the Fondation Custodia in Paris (inv. no. 266) also shows an entire room, different from that in the Amsterdam drawing, with a fireplace on the left and a bed near a door on the right.4 A drawing in the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum in Cambridge (MA) (inv. no. 1961.151)5 seems to be a variant of our drawing, but, in my opinion, not by Rembrandt.
By checking the birthdays of the four children against the dating of the drawings, we can determine in which houses the various bedrooms were located. Rumbartus, their first child, was christened on 15 December 1635 and was born in the house ‘next to councillor Boereel niuwe doelstraat’,6 the address Rembrandt used in a letter to Huygens dated February 1636.7 On the 15th of the same month, Rumbartus was laid to rest. The style of the drawings indicates a later date, so the bedrooms cannot have been in that house. Cornelia, their second child, named after Rembrandt’s mother, was christened on 22 July 1638 and was born in the house ‘on Binnen Amstel, called Confectionery’.8 Rembrandt gave this address on 17 December 1637 and on 12 January 1639.9 She was buried three weeks later, on 13 August 1638. A second daughter, also given the name Cornelia, was christened on 29 July 1640, and she, too, lived only a matter of days and was buried on 12 August. She must have been born in the house on the St-Anthonisbreestraat (in what is now the Rembrandthuis at 4 Jodenbreestraat), which Rembrandt had purchased on 5 January 1639. Titus, who was christened on 22 September 1641 and lived to the age of twenty-six, was also born there.
If we take the style into consideration, the drawing in the Lugt Collection was made slightly later than the Amsterdam drawing, and a dating of 1635 is too early for both of them. We can thus deduce that our drawing was made in the bedroom of the house on the Binnen Amstel and Saskia must have been pregnant with the first Cornelia, and the drawing probably was made not long before she gave birth in July 1638. The drawing in the Lugt Collection would have been made in what is now the Rembrandthuis, when she was carrying either the second Cornelia or Titus, which points to a date just before July 1640 or before September 1641.
A drawing in the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden (inv. no. C 1326)10 has the same general character as our drawing, except that we now see Rembrandt’s wife from close by: she is wearing a similar cap, which covers her forehead, and she also clasps her robe in her right hand, as if she were about to close it more tightly.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1299 (c. 1635-40); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 697 (c. 1636); 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. 24 (1639); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 404 (c. 1635); 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. 11, with earlier literature; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel et al., The Rembrandt Papers: Documents, Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1987-88, no. 18; M. van Berge-Gerbaud, Rembrandt en zijn school: Tekeningen uit de collectie Frits Lugt, Paris 1997, no. 9; E. Starcky, Rembrandt: Les Figures, Paris 1999, p. 17; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘De schilder, zijn leven, zijn vrouw, de min en het dienstmeisje’, De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 101 (2000), nos. 1/2, pp. 23 and 26 from pp. 1-40, fig. 38; M. Westermann, Rembrandt, London 2000, pp. 146 and 149, fig. 91; J. Lloyd Williams et al., Rembrandt’s Women, exh. cat. Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001, no. 77; C. Dittrich and T. Ketelsen et al., Rembrandt: Die Dresdener Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett) 2004, pp. 184 and 214, under no. 103; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 41-42, fig. 35; P. Schatborn, C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken and H. Grollemund, Rembrandt dessinateur: Chefs-d’oeuvres des collections en France, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 2006-07, p. 15, fig. 6; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 35 and 49-50, under nos. 5 and 10; B.P.J. Broos, Saskia: De vrouw van Rembrandt, Zwolle 2012, pp. 114-15, fig. 29; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 404 (c. 1638)
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Bedroom with Saskia in Bed, Amsterdam, c. 1638', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28131
(accessed 23 November 2024 00:00:04).