Object data
reed pen and brown ink; framing line in dark brown ink
height 150 mm × width 141 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
The Angel Appearing to Elijah
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
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inscribed: upper right, in graphite (with the 1794 Reynolds sale no.), 983; lower right, by Van Rijmsdyck, in brown ink (effaced), Rymsdyk’s Museum (L. 2167)
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stamped: lower left, with the mark of Reynolds (L. 2364)
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inscribed on verso: lower centre, in pencil, 306
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stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Faded; foxing throughout;1 restorations upper left and lower centre edge
Provenance
…; collection Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-88/89), London (L. 2167); …; collection Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), London (L. 2364); his sale, London (A.C. de Poggi), 26 May 1794, Album QQ, no. 983, as Rembrandt, £ 3.3.0.;2 …; purchased from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, as Rembrandt, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague;3 by whom donated to the museum, as Rembrandt, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-13
Credit line: Gift of Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - Venice 1659)
He was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, on 19 April 1633.4 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.5 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 25.6 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
Elijah, who was fleeing from Jezebel, went into the desert and begged the Lord to let him die. He was then visited by an angel, who gave him food and water (I Kings 19:1-8). In the drawing, the prophet is kneeling in front of the angel, his hands folded in prayer. The angel raises his right hand and says ‘arise and eat’. After Elijah had eaten, he started the long journey to Horeb, the mount of God.
A drawing by Rembrandt in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 3564) depicts the same subject in a different composition.7 It is dated to the early 1650s, the same period in which Drost was a pupil in Rembrandt’s studio. The sheet probably served as a model for Drost, who did not slavishly copy the composition but created his own invention. Compared to the museum’s drawing, the figures in the Paris sheet are more vigorously drawn and expressive. Rembrandt’s Elijah jumps up and raises both arms in shock at the sight of the angel. Drost drew the prophet seated on his knees in a seemingly calm pose. Moreover, the angel in Rembrandt’s drawing leans forward, gently tapping Elijah on the shoulder, whereas in the present drawing he is standing up straighter. Yet the slightly tilted head of the angel, his hair parted in the middle and his facial features (e.g. the single pen line for his eyebrows) are taken directly from Rembrandt’s drawing. Drost also imitated Rembrandt’s drawing style by alternating between thick and thin strokes of the reed pen. The angel is also reminiscent of a similar figure by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), who studied under Rembrandt about fifteen years earlier than Drost (cf. inv. no. RP-T-1930-27). However, the draughtsmanship of the present sheet, for example the multi-directional hatching and the angular lines, point more in the direction of Drost, as was recognized by both Henkel and Pont.
Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-c. 1788/89), the Dutch-born collector, pastel portraitist and illustrator of medical books active in England during the second half of the eighteenth century, consistently wrote Rymsdyk’s Museum on drawings in his collection.8 A subsequent owner of the present sheet attempted to remove this inscription at lower right. Rijmsdyck’s son, Andreas van Rijmsdyck (d. 1786), also an artist, who was active in Bath, copied motifs from this and other drawings thought to be by Rembrandt when in his father’s collection. As Sumowski noted, in the left background of a signed sheet also now in the Frits Lugt Collection (inv. no. 8584), Andreas recorded the figure of Elijah, his bag and the Bible lying next to him from this sheet.9 At centre of the copy is an actor dressed up in the role of Badeloch(?), taken from a drawing in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York (inv. no. I, 177),10 previously ascribed to Rembrandt, but now recognized as by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674).11 The third figure in Andreas’ drawing, an oriental in a turban, seen from behind, was copied from an unknown drawing, also possibly by Drost.12
Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2018
Literature
Tentoonstelling van teekeningen van Oude Hollandsche meesters uit de verzameling van Dr. Corn. Hofstede de Groot, exh. cat. The Hague (Haagsche Kunstkring) 1902-03, no. 39 (as Rembrandt); C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1258 (as Rembrandt, c. 1645); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 185 (as Rembrandt, c. 1645); 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. 1; D. Pont, ‘De composities Ruth en Naomi te Bremen en te Oxford: Toeschrijving aan Willem Drost’, Oud Holland 75 (1960), p. 212, no. a; O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A 65 (as school of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, III (1980), no. 555*, with additional earlier literature, and pp. 1206, 1210 and 1212, under nos. 554*, 556* and 557*; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 100, n. 34; J. Tonkovich, ‘‘Rymsdyk’s Museum’ Jan van Rymsdyk as a Collector of Old Master Drawings’, Journal of the History of Collections 17 (2005), no. 2, p. 162, fig. 7; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 62, under no. 14, n. 7; p. 90, under no. 23, n. 2; D.A. de Witt, L. van Sloten and J. van der Veen, Rembrandt’s Late Pupils: Studying under a Genius, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2015, p. 124, no. 52; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 84, under no. 40
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000/J. Shoaf Turner, 2018, 'attributed to Willem Drost, The Angel Appearing to Elijah, 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.36080
(accessed 10 November 2024 11:32:47).