Object data
black and red chalk; framing lines in brown ink over black chalk
height 173 mm × width 273 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Two Horses at a Halting-place
Amsterdam, c. 1637
Inscriptions
-
inscribed on verso: lower left, in pencil, CH
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stamped on verso: lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Provenance
…; ? anonymous sale, London (Foster), 3 March 1937, no. 147, to the dealer Colnaghi, London; from whom, £ 300, to Isaäc de Bruyn-van der Leeuw (1872-1953), Spiez, 15 April 1937;1 by whom donated to the museum (L. 2228), 1949, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum, 1960
Object number: RP-T-1961-77
Credit line: De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland
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
Two dray-horses are being unhitched from a cart. One figure (it is unclear whether male or female) feeds fodder to one of the animals from a trough, while the drayman standing on the footboard is either laying a blanket over the other horse or drying it.
The drawing was started in black chalk, and the head and neck of the nearest horse were later worked up in red chalk. It has been suggested that this was done later, in the eighteenth century,2 probably because the fine drawing style in red differs from the sketchy and occasionally angular passages done in black chalk. Rembrandt seems to have executed the black chalk passages rather quickly, perhaps when he saw this scene in situ in town or in the countryside. The two figures, the trough, the lightly-sketched legs of the rear animal and the cart have all been indicated in a very cursory way. The horse in the foreground was more fully worked out, but only the general shape of its head, eye and nostrils were indicated in black. The difference in style between the areas in red and black chalk can possibly be explained by a difference in time and purpose. Rembrandt probably worked up the drawing with red chalk some time later because he realized that the central area of the composition was too empty and nondescript. He corrected this fault not only by further developing the head, but also by choosing red chalk to do this. As usual when reworking a drawing, he made changes: the ears were enlarged and the contour of the neck was adjusted.
Based on the similar style of a black chalk drawing of an elephant, signed and dated 1637, in the Albertina in Vienna (inv. no. 17558),3 the Rijksmuseum sheet must have been made around the same time, although a dating during the Leiden period (1625-31) has also been suggested.4 In the second half of the 1630s, Rembrandt often drew in red chalk, and there are sketches of Saskia, such as one now in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.183),5 and Two Studies of a Sleeping Child, in a private collection in Basel,6 that show sufficient similarities with their fine chalk lines to the red chalk of the horse’s head to allow us to confirm the attribution and to assign the sheet to the same period. The combination of black and red chalk can repeatedly be seen in early figure studies from the Leiden period,7 as well as in one drawing of a Horse Lying down, in the British Museum in London (inv. no. Ff,4.121), previously attributed to Jan Lievens but convincingly reassigned to Rembrandt by Martin Royalton-Kisch, who dated it circa 1626.8 If horses are rarely represented in Rembrandt’s drawings, they do appear in his earliest paintings and etchings, and in his later work. The Amsterdam drawing is certainly not a study in the strict sense of the word, but is part of a series depicting different animals drawn naer ’t leven (from life), which were later brought together in an album ‘full of drawings by Rembrandt of animals sketched from life’, as documented in the 1656 bankruptcy inventory.9
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
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. 124; O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 461 (c. 1637); 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. 16, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘An Early Drawing by Jan Lievens’, Master Drawings 29 (1991), no. 4, pp. 411-13 from pp. 410-15, fig. 4; T. Vignau-Wilberg, with P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Followers: Drawings from Munich, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2001-02, no. 27; K.A. Schröder and M. Bisanz-Prakken (eds.), Rembrandt, exh. cat. Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina) 2004, no. 69; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, p. 52, fig. 47; M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘From Lievens to Rembrandt’, Master Drawings 47 (2009), no. 4, p. 510 from pp. 508-511, fig. 4; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), under no. 73, n. 4
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Two Horses at a Halting-place, Amsterdam, c. 1637', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28137
(accessed 23 September 2024 00:27:50).