Object data
red chalk
height 130 mm × width 175 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Saskia in Bed / verso: Boy Sleeping (by a follower of Rembrandt)
Amsterdam, c. 1635
Inscriptions
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inscribed, lower centre (with the sheet turned upside down), in pencil (all apparently removed in 1984, according to Schatborn 1985a, no. 12): 14; 525 (the no. of the 1895 Pitcairn Knowles sale); and 1190 (the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.)
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stamped (with the sheet turned upside down): lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)
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inscribed on verso: lower right, by Van Rijmsdijk, in brown ink (now totally effaced), Rymsdyk’s M. (L. 2167)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Provenance
…; collection Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-88/90), London (L. 2167); …; ? collection William Esdaile (1758-1837), London;1 ? his sale and Edward Cheney (1803-84, London), London (Sotheby's), 29 April (4 May) 1885 sqq., no. 865 (‘A child asleep; from the Esdaile collection’), £14, to the dealer Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (c. 1840-92), London;2 …; sale, Ritter Alfred von Franck (1808-84, Graz), Frankfurt-am-Main (F.A.C. Prestel), 4 December 1889 sqq., no. 187 (‘Schlafendes Kind. […] Meisterhaft mit der Feder skizzirt und leicht getuscht. Auf der Rückseite die höchst flüchtige mit Roth-tein gezeichnete Skizze einer im Bett ruhenden Figur’), 131 DM;3 …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller & Co.), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 525, fl. 180, to the dealer C.F. Roos, Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;4 from whom, fl. 207, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901
Object number: RP-T-1901-A-4520(R)
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
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
The faint red chalk sketch of Saskia sitting in bed with folded hands used to be considered as the verso of the more fully rendered pen-and-wash drawing of a Boy Sleeping (fig. a, inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4520(V)), but now the roles have been reversed.
In what is now the recto, only the first stage has been drawn in with red chalk in a more or less uniform tone. Other drawings, after having been started in this fashion, were often further developed with darker lines, and small changes and improvements were introduced. An example of this is an elaborated red chalk drawing of Saskia Sitting up in Bed, Holding a Child from the collection of Count Antoine Seilern, now in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.183).5 Rembrandt drew his wife in bed several times,6 and he twice depicted her in an etching together with other motifs (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-773).7 He probably portrayed her at the very end of one of her four pregnancies, since in one drawing a nursing couch can already be seen in her bedroom (inv. no. RP-T-1930-53).
The present sketch probably dates from the same period as the drawing of Saskia in red chalk in London. Based on the finely curved lines, we can confidently assign both drawings to 1635 or later. The child in the London drawing could thus be Rumbartus (for his dates, see inv. no. RP-T-1930-53), who has also been identified in a pen drawing of Four Heads of Saskia with a Child in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. R 83 recto (PK)),8 which would date between December 1635 and January 1636. The clothes worn by Saskia in the red chalk drawings are not always the same, which indicates some difference in time.
The portrayal of a sleeping boy on the Amsterdam verso seems charming at first glance, but closer examination reveals a rather stiff and careful handling of the lines, which does not really suit the composition. The relationship between the shapes and the way in which they are handled is not sufficiently spontaneous; Rembrandt’s stylistic trademarks are a bit too independent of the forms. The relationship of the facial parts to one another is not exact enough to speak of Rembrandt’s usual accuracy in depicting facial shapes and expressions. The dense shading on the right and the carefully applied brush washes are also uncharacteristic. Compared with uncontested drawings in the same style, Boy Sleeping could possibly be a copy. The question remains as to who was depicted here. The unknown original could not have represented one of Rembrandt’s own children, but possibly one of the many children of Hendrick Uylenburgh, Saskia’s uncle, and Maria van Eyck, in whose house Rembrandt lived until 1635.9
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1190; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 686 (c. 1636); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, nos. 22-23 (c. 1638); Benesch 1973, no. 379 (c. 1638); 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. 12, with earlier literature; C. Dittrich and T. Ketelsen et al., Rembrandt: Die Dresdener Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett) 2004, pp. 184 and 214, under no. 103; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 40, 42 and 209 under no. 7 and no. 80; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 379 (c. 1635)
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Saskia in Bed / verso: Boy Sleeping (by a follower of Rembrandt), Amsterdam, c. 1635', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200117716
(accessed 9 December 2025 18:07:54).Figures
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