Object data
pen and brown ink, with traces of white chalk, on brownish-grey cartridge paper, toned with light brown wash
height 97 mm × width 209 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Longhouse Farmstead with a Haystack in a Polder Landscape
Amsterdam, c. 1652
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Brown stains, upper right and centre left
Provenance
...; sale, Comte Antoine-François Andréossy (1761-1828, Paris and Montauban), Paris (P. Navoit), 13 (16) April 1864 sqq., no. 405 (‘Vue de l’entrée du village d’Omval [...] Jolis dessins à la plume, lavés de bistre’), with two other drawings, 90 frs, to Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790-1876), Paris (L. 119); ? his sale, Paris (M. Delestre), 16 April (12 May) 1877 sqq., no. 69 (‘Vue de l’entrée du village d’Omval. Une chaumière et une meule de blé recouverte d’une toiture. Dessin à la plume, lavé de bistre. - Collection Andréossy’), fl. 52;1 ...; collection Freiherr Max von Heyl zu Herrnsheim (1844-1925), Darmstadt (L. 2879); his sale, Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 25 May 1903 sqq., no. 248, 940 DM, to Büchle for Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-61
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
Rembrandt sketched a small farmhouse and a lopsided hayrick sunk into the flat polder. To the right is a gate leading into the farmyard and in the foreground the path where Rembrandt positioned himself to make the drawing: the horizon in the distance is indicated with a few dots and lines, the farmhouse and hay barn with very fine, short lines and a few small areas of shadow. There is a barrel standing in front of the hayrick and a man walking in front of the farmhouse; on the left two men are busy digging. A small tree is being blown by the wind, as are the reeds along the ditch that separates the path from the farmyard. For this drawing, Rembrandt used a brownish-grey sort of oatmeal or cartridge paper, which evokes the atmosphere of an overcast day. To intensify this effect, he also toned the paper light brown.
The rectangular building is a langhuisboerderij (‘longhouse-farmstead’), which has a dwelling on one side with a hearth in the middle, and a cow shed on the other, short side. Made entirely of wood, with a thatched roof, these farmsteads had no chimney, but a smoke hole in the roof ridge. There are at least three other sketches in this concise drawing style on the same sort of paper, recording similar subjects, by pupils or followers of Rembrandt. They show a windmill and wooden longhouses by the water, one in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth (inv. no. 1047)3 and the other in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (inv. no. KKSgb4),4 and a third is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. no. 29.100.938).5 This type of farmstead was found in the area north of the IJ, for instance in the Zaan region and the small villages in Holland on the Zuiderzee, and our drawing could depict a farmstead in the north of Holland. Most such farmhouses were surrounded by trees and it is exceptional that here the farmhouse is depicted without any protection on the flat land. The drawing has been dated to around 1650, but it is stylistically closer to the dated drawing of the Amsterdam Town Hall after a Fire of 1652, in the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam.6
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1307; M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 79 (c. 1650); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1222 (c. 1650); 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. 35, 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. 24-25, under no. 5; B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, p. 56, fig. 14; E. Brugerolles, Rembrandt et son entourage, exh. cat. Paris (École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts)/Ajaccio (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts) 2012-14, p. 150, fig. 1 (as attributed to Pieter de With)
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Longhouse Farmstead with a Haystack in a Polder Landscape, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28553
(accessed 15 November 2024 14:36:16).