Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with brown wash and opaque white (oxidized), over traces of graphite, on paper toned with light brown wash; framing line in brown ink

height 80 mm × width 172 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: upper right, in blue pencil, 18; below this, in pencil (with the 1883 Jacob de Vos sale no.), de Vos 409; centre, in pencil, 8; lower right, in pencil (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), deGr 1204
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); below this, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450); next to this, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Provenance

...; sale, Baron Johan Gijsbert Verstolk, Heer van Soelen en Aldenhaag (1776-1845, The Hague and Soelen, near Tiel), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 22 March 1847 sqq., Album F, no. 253, as Rembrandt (‘Dessin pareil au precedent [Une lion couché], mais un pue plus achevé, au bistre.’), fl. 112, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;¹ ...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450), by 1868;² his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 409, as Rembrandt, fl. 820, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135);³ from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom, with 166 other drawings, fl. 5,049 for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1889

Object number: RP-T-1889-A-2044

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Entry

The lion is sleeping with its head on its forepaws, furnishing an excellent opportunity for an artist to make a drawing of the creature. The sketch has been worked out in some detail in pen and wash, but the brownish base of the paper remains visible in a few places. Opaque white, now oxidized, has been applied here and there.

The same lion is depicted in a drawing in the British Museum, London (inv. no. Oo,9.74),⁴ but that version is less extensively washed, allowing for more variation in tone. In the museum’s drawing, the wash has been continued beyond the animal’s body in the foreground and background. The London drawing was initially thought to be the model for the Amsterdam version,⁵ but it was later deemed also to be a copy, since the qualitative difference between the two sheets was considered minimal.⁶ This opinion, however, is debatable. If we compare the London lion with the uncontested drawing of a lion, from circa 1650, in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. R 12 (PK)),⁷ the similarities between them are greater than those between the London and Amsterdam drawings. The handling of line in pen and brush and the subtle relationship between the light and dark areas show that the London drawing – although probably also a copy – was executed by a more talented follower, one who could reproduce the quality of Rembrandt’s lost original more closely than the hand responsible for the museum’s drawing. The original model was probably drawn by Rembrandt at about the same time as he made the Rotterdam lion, that is, circa 1650.

The same sleeping lion is included as a print, in reverse, in Bernard Picart’s Recueil de lions (no. D 3; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-51.740),⁸ an etched series that appeared in 1729. For information on this publication, see inv. no. RP-T-1930-58.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1204 (as Rembrandt); 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. 107 (as copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1650); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. C 60 (as copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1650-52); 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. 109, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online), under no. 95

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'anonymous, Study of a Lion Asleep, in or after c. 1650 - 1699', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28630

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