Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, over traces of graphite

height 176 mm × width 295 mm

Inscriptions

stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228a)
inscribed on old mount (no longer present), in red chalk: lower centre, in red chalk, N 165; lower right, N 2

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Some dirt at the four corners of the sheet; repair lower right

Provenance

…; from the dealer J. L. Reichlen, Geneve, fl. 100, to the museum (L. 2228a), 1948

Object number: RP-T-1948-346

The artist

Jacques de Gheyn III (? Haarlem/Leiden, ? 1596 - Utrecht, 1641)

He was the son of the artist Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629) and Eva Stalpaert van der Wiele (?-?). He grew up in The Hague, where his family maintained close ties with the House of Orange and Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687), secretary to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange (1584-1647). Between 1618 and 1620, De Gheyn III was in London with Huygens, whom he accompanied two years later to Stockholm, where he brought eight of his father’s drawings and paintings.¹ It is unclear why this expedition took place and what the outcome was.² He returned to London in 1622 and stayed there until 1627. While travelling abroad, he visited prominent collections, primarily to study Classical sculpture and further his skills.³

From 1627 to 1634, De Gheyn III worked in The Hague, probably alongside his father until the latter’s death in 1629.⁴ They shared a house at the Lange Houtstraat, next door to Constantijn Huygens.⁵ In 1634 he moved to Utrecht, where he became canon of the St. Mariakerk.⁶

De Gheyn III probably took up drawing at an early age; in drawings by his father, he is represented sketching. His first dated work is from 1614, Father Time, now in the collection of the Koninklijk Fries Genootschap, Leeuwarden.⁷ His oeuvre consists primarily of drawings and etchings, the latter considered his most original contribution.⁸

As a draughtsman and etcher, De Gheyn III followed in the tradition of his father and Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), who made pen-and-ink drawings, so-called Federkunststücke, that imitated the appearance of prints. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate the drawings of the younger De Gheyn from those of his father, but they are generally coarser in execution and reveal more attention to light and dark contrasts, using heavy pen lines, alternated with finer lines, abundant stipples and short streaks. Over the years, a small oeuvre of drawings has been established.⁹ He was also a collector and owned works by Rembrandt (1606-1669). The latter painted his portrait in 1632, now in the collection of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (inv. no DPG099).¹⁰

Constantijn Huygens II (1628-1697), in his autobiography, lamented the sudden breakdown of De Gheyn III’s work, because he had shown such promise as a young artist.¹¹ Indeed, only a few works are known after 1629 when his father passed away. De Gheyn III died on 5 June 1641 in Utrecht.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIII (1920), p. 533 (as Gheyn, Jacob de (3)); F.G. Waller, Biographisch woordenboek van Noord Nederlandsche graveurs, The Hague 1938, p. 110; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), pp. 193-200; H. Möhle, ‘Drawings by Jacques de Gheyn III’, Master Drawings 1 (1963), no. 2, pp. 3-12; I.Q. van Regteren Alterna, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations, The Hague 1983, pp. 109-31; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 307

Entry

In 1594 the University of Leiden opened the first anatomical theatre in the Netherlands. The construction was initiated by botanist and anatomist Pieter Pauw (1564-1617), who was a professor at the university. During the winter months, Pauw performed dissections at the theatre for students and faculty members, as well as members of the public. De Gheyn’s father, Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629), knew Pauw personally and attended several of these events. He probably took his son with him, as it was an excellent opportunity for his young apprentice to study and draw the human body. In a rare print of 1615 by Andries Jacobsz Stock (1580/82-1648) after a lost drawing by De Gheyn II depicting an anatomy lesson in the theatre by Pauw, of which there is an impression in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 1985-52-16163), he might even have included himself and his son (staring out at the viewer) in the middle row at the far left edge.¹²

According to Van Regteren Altena, De Gheyn III may have made three drawings of dissected limps; the present sheet, a second study of the same arm, which is also in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. [RP-T-1957-258](/en/collection/ RP-T-1957-258/catalogue-entry ), and a sheet with four studies of an amputated left leg in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 6866).¹³ He dated the sheets around 1615, when De Gheyn III would have been around eighteen years old.

Of the three studies, Van Regteren Altena was the most certain about the attribution of the present drawing. He compared the linear treatment of the pen lines with those in De Gheyn III’s prints of nudes and pointed to the shape of the thumb of the lower dissected hand, which is thin and gnarly, like the thumb of the man in his engraving after his father of a Praying Elderly Couple (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1878-A-924).¹⁴. Indeed, the manner in which the arms are drawn in pen are very similar to how the artist handled his burin. Similar penwork can be found in the lower two legs in the Paris sheet, which are drawn on top of an initial sketch in chalk. In turn, the chalk drawings of the upper two legs in the latter sheet, are similar to those on the other Rijksmuseum sheet (inv. no. [RP-T-1957-258](/en/collection/ RP-T-1957-258/catalogue-entry). Perhaps father and son participated in a joint drawing session and De Gheyn III finished some of his father’s drawings to further his studies.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Literature

H. Möhle, ‘Drawings by Jacques de Gheyn III’, Master Drawings 1 (1963), no. 2, pp. 8-9 (fig. 3); I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations, 3 vols., The Hague 1983, no. III 51; K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German drawings of the XVth and XVIth centuries of the Frits Lugt collection, coll. cat. Paris (Fondation Custodia) 1992, under no. 95

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'attributed to Jacques de (III) Gheyn, Two Anatomical Studies of An Arm, Leiden, c. 1615', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200525198

(accessed 11 December 2025 14:43:12).