Reclining Lion with Fodder

Entry

When artists wanted to portray exotic animals in biblical or other scenes, they often had to rely on printed or drawn models by colleagues or earlier artists. Only rarely were they fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study and draw such wild live animals themselves. Willem Goeree (1635-1711), in his instruction manual entitled Inleydinge tot de practijck der alghemeene schilder-konst (1670), urged artists not to miss such opportunities: ‘It is of great importance to seize the chance to see the rarities, such as lions, tigers, bears, elephants, camels and such beasts as one seldom sets eyes upon, and which one nonetheless needs to use in one’s inventions from time to time.’⁴

We know that wild animals and birds brought by sailors from distant countries were often exhibited at fairs and markets,⁵ and that the Dutch East India Company had stables in which these live animals were kept. There were also a few menageries, such as the one owned by Prince Frederick Henry of Orange in Honselaarsdijk near The Hague, one of the oldest zoos in the Netherlands. In addition, exotic species arrived from abroad as taxidermied specimens or were stuffed after their death in the Netherlands, and these preserved examples were copied by artists. Rembrandt, for example, had a stuffed bird of paradise in his collection of curiosities, and he made a drawing of it, now in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. RF 4687),⁶ as if it were still alive. As the 1656 bankruptcy inventory shows, he kept his sketches of animals drawn from life in an album.⁷ We do not know if this album contained animal studies of both domestic and wild creatures, but there are surviving drawings by him of domestic animals such as pigs, dogs, horses (see inv. no. RP-T-1961-77) and cows (see inv. no. RP-T-1930-59), as well as exotic animals such as camels, elephants and – most numerous of all – lions.

Rembrandt probably sketched lions together with his students, since many such studies formerly attributed to him are now considered to be the work of pupils or followers (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1961-81, RP-T-1901-A-4525, RP-T-1930-58, RP-T-1889-A-2044 and RP-T-1948-408(R) and RP-T-1948-408(V).⁸ With the experience he had in drawing from life, he was also able to sketch these animals from memory and to place them in all kinds of narrative painted and etched scenes. A good example are the horses and the lion in The Concord of the State in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. 1717 (OK)),⁹ which Rembrandt painted in the early 1640s. If the lion in this painting is compared to the one in the earlier etching of St Jerome as a Hermit, Reading in the Wilderness, dated 1634 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-49),¹⁰ it is clear that the animal in the print, which is not nearly as well characterized, must have been copied from a model rather than based on a study from life.

The present sketch, by contrast, must have been made from life. In it, Rembrandt rendered the lion directly and confidently with broad strokes. Among his surviving drawings of lions, this is the only one executed with the reed pen. Very little ink was used for the nose and forehead because the light is falling on that area. The hind legs are drawn with a great flourish; the mane was rendered with broad lines in various tonalities, and hatching with a dry pen was used for the shadow above the back and forelegs. By rubbing the ink lightly with a ‘stained finger’, as it was called by Van Hoogstraten,¹¹ a slightly darker tone between the lines of hatching on the leg was created. The fact that the tail is cut off shows that the sheet of paper used to be larger.

There are notes on the back of the drawing that give some idea of its relative value over the years. The oldest inscription, dating from the seventeenth century, states that 26 drawings by Rembrandt were sold for 20 guilders. This sentence was crossed out later, and in a different handwriting from the same century we read that five drawings of lions (there were initially six) cost 3 guilders. In the seventeenth century, drawings were almost always sold in large groups, usually in albums. Later the groups became smaller, until finally, during the course of the eighteenth century, drawings came to be sold individually. Our lion drawing first cost 75 cents, then 60 cents, and in the 1895 auction of W. Pitcairn Knowles it fetched the highest price of all the drawings sold: 510 guilders. The broad drawing style was considered to be very expressive at the time, as can be inferred from the description in the auction catalogue: ‘C’est bien un de ces lions dessinis avec passion...’

The drawing is generally dated after circa 1660, rather late in Rembrandt’s career. This means that it could not have been part of the album of animals drawn from life that is mentioned in the 1656 inventory.

Peter Schatborn, 2017