Object data
reed pen and brown ink, some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or brush; framing line in light brown ink
height 144 mm × width 175 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
Two Seated Old Men, One with a Globe
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
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inscribed on verso, in pencil: upper centre (with the sheet turned upside down), by Hofstede de Groot, T 97 291 en VV / h 146 / b 174; lower right (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), HdG 1191
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stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Light brown stain, upper centre
Provenance
...; sale, Hendrik Valkenburg (1836-96, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (H.G. Tersteeg and F. Muller), 2 February 1897, no. 156, as Rembrandt, with four other drawings, fl. 68.20 for all, to the dealer H.J. Valk for the museum (L. 2228)
Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3477
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - Venice 1659)
He was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, on 19 April 1633.1 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.2 Before he entered Rembrandt’s workshop, probably at the end of the 1640s, he may have studied under Rembrandt’s pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) in the mid-1640s. After Drost left Amsterdam for Italy, where he is documented in Venice from 1655, he abandoned his Rembrandtesque manner and adopted the powerful chiaroscuro style of the Venetian tenebrists. He may have worked only briefly in Rome, but was mostly active in Venice, where he trained Johann Carl Loth (1632–1698), among others, and he is now known to have died there from pneumonia in 1659, at the age of only 25.3 The rediscovery of his burial record in Venice on 25 February 1659 means that many painted works with later dates traditionally ascribed to him have recently been removed from his oeuvre. On the basis of his choice of subject and style, the majority of his drawings seem to have originated during his apprenticeship in Amsterdam under Rembrandt.
Entry
The drawing was previously entitled Democritus and Heraclitus.4 Initially, this would seem to be correct, since as a rule in seventeenth-century Dutch iconography the laughing and the crying philosophers are rendered half-length with a terrestrial globe as their attribute. Yet the neutral attitude of the figures and the absence of any interaction suggest that these are two separate studies of bearded scholars. The drawing was cut down at right, as can be seen from the pen lines that continue beyond the framing line, for instance in the rendering of the open book on the desk.
Formerly given to Rembrandt, the present sheet was attributed to Drost by Schatborn in 1985.5 Characteristic for Drost are the sharp facial features, the poorly articulated hands and the passages of extremely dense parallel hatching – as can be found in the artist’s earliest documented work, his etched Self-portrait of 1652 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1907-2834),6 and a drawing of Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener (‘Noli me tangere’) in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KKS7049).7 Schatborn placed the present sheet in a group of drawings that he considered to be later works by Drost, including St Jerome Reading in his Study (inv. no. RP-T-1948-407) and Girl Leaning on the Bottom Half of a Dutch Door, with Sketches of her Head (inv. no. RP-T-1930-50). Compared to Drost’s earlier works, such as Tobias and the Angel with the Fish (inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2053) and David Playing his Harp before Saul, with a Servant and Other Musicians (inv. no. RP-T-1963-271), the handling in these later drawings is more confident, with the figures better modelled and the lighting more convincingly rendered.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1191 (as Rembrandt); A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 415 (as Rembrandt); W. Weisbach, Rembrandt, Berlin/Leipzig 1926, p. 618, n. 11 (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. 29, with additional earlier literature (as Rembrandt); I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Mostra di incisioni e disegni di Rembrandt, exh. cat. Rome (Museo di Palazzo Venezia)/Florence (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi) 1951, no. 85 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, Rembrandt: Ausstellung im 350. Geburtsjahr des Meister, exh. cat. Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina) 1956, no. 97 (as Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, ‘Rembrandtzeichnungen’, Pantheon 22 (1964), p. 240 (as Rembrandt); S. Slive, Drawings of Rembrandt, with a Selection of Drawings by his Pupils and Followers, 2 vols., New York 1965, II, no. 307 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, Rembrandt: Werk und Forschung (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), Lucerne 1970 (orig. edn. Vienna 1935), p. 51 (as Rembrandt, c. 1650-52); E. Mitsch, Rembrandt: Radierungen aus dem Besitz der Albertina, exh. cat. Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina) 1970-71, p. 50, under no. 70 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 896 (as Rembrandt); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 101, fig. 17; W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 135, under no. 118; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, no. 6
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Two Seated Old Men, One with a Globe, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.36089
(accessed 23 November 2024 03:09:14).