Object data
reed pen and brown ink, with brown wash, later additions in grey wash; framing line in brown ink
height 104 mm × width 180 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Winter View with a Waterway, Cottages and Two Boats
Amsterdam, c. 1650
Inscriptions
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inscribed: lower right, by Ten Kate, in brown ink (effaced), Rembrandt
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stamped: lower right (effaced), with the mark of Zomer (L. 1511)
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inscribed on verso: upper left, in pencil (effaced), a/c f 325 (?); upper centre, probably by Gabburri, in brown ink, Orig.e di Rembrandt (L. 2992b); centre left, in pen and brown ink (effaced), a/c f 025 (?); lower right, in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), 1309
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stamped on verso: centre (twice), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: Pot, similar to Briquet 12632 (1542)
Condition
Light foxing throughout1
Provenance
...; collection Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1724), Amsterdam (L. 1511);2 ...; collection Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731), Amsterdam;3 ? his sale, Amsterdam (I. Tirion), 16 June 1732 sqq., possibly Album Q, no. 15 (‘Twee landgezigtjes, door ditto Rembrand [met de pen, en met roet gewassen]’), with one other drawing; ...; ? collection Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri (1676-1742), Florence (L. 2992b);4 ...; purchased from Freiherr Egon von Kap-herr (1877-1935), Starnberger See, with one other drawing, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1900;5 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-63
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
It is winter and the trees are bare. On the other side of the water on the left, next to the cottages, we can see a boat with a pole leaning against it. To the left of the boat, branches with a fishing net emerge from the water. In the foreground, there is a pier and on the right a man on a boat is lowering a sail in his boat.
Rembrandt drew the background with very fine, repeatedly broken pen lines and very subtle brushstrokes of wash that balance the tonal values. The pier, the man and the boat, drawn with broad strokes of a reed pen, were not very precisely indicated. A later owner of the drawing added a grey tone to the boat and the water surrounding it, a phenomenon that also occurs in inv. nos. RP-T-1901-A-4523, RP-T-1898-A-3689 and RP-T-1930-20. The contrast between the foreground and the background is striking. It is often the case in landscapes as well as in other scenes that the background is thinly and finely depicted, whereas the foreground motifs are set down more forcefully. In this manner, Rembrandt tried to achieve the greatest possible feeling of space and depth.
A few of Rembrandt’s landscapes are clearly seasonal, for instance, representing either winter or early spring: a painting of 1646 showing figures on the ice, in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (inv. no. GK 241);6 an etching of houses along a river with bare trees, datable circa 1650 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-464);7 and a small number of drawings of the same period, arguably showing snowy landscapes, such as one in the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum in Cambridge (MA) (inv. no. 1932.368),8 and another in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth (inv. no. 1048).9 The Amsterdam drawing was probably also made around 1650.
This winter landscape, together with the sketch of Four Men Standing, Wearing Hats (inv. no. RP-T-1930-55), has one of the earliest known provenances among the Rembrandt drawings in the Rijksprentenkabinet (see also inv. no. RP-T-1981-1 for a drawing with an even earlier owner). Winter View with a Waterway and Four Men Standing belonged to the art dealer and agent Jan Pietersz Zomer, through whose hands the most important collections of the seventeenth century passed. In the catalogue of his collection, compiled around 1722, there are hundreds of drawings by Rembrandt, including 60 ‘landscapes near Amsterdam, skilfully drawn from life’.10 After Zomer’s death in 1724, this drawing and the sketch of the four men were acquired by Lambert ten Kate, one of the greatest collectors of his time. It was he who wrote Rembrandt’s name in the lower right-hand corner of the drawing. His collection was sold at auction in Amsterdam in 1732. It was probably shortly thereafter that it was acquired by an Italian collector, here tentatively identified by Jane Shoaf Turner as Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, whose handwriting can be recognized in the inscription on the verso (see L. 2992b).11 Gabburri typically wrote the names of artists on the verso of sheets in a heavy brown ink that often bleeds through to the recto, as indeed is the case here.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1309; 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. 73 (1646-47); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 837 (c. 1648-50); 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. 31, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 158, under no. 71; A. Blankert et al., Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria)/Canberra (National Gallery of Australia) 1997-98, no. 83; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 68 and 70, fig. 63; C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandts Landschappen, exh. cat. Kassel (Staatliche Museen)/Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 2006-07, p. 95, fig. 80; W.W. Robinson, Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, New Haven/London 2016, p. 239, fig. 2
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Winter View with a Waterway, Cottages and Two Boats, 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.28549
(accessed 23 November 2024 18:35:16).