Object data
pen and brown ink, with brown wash; framing line in brown ink
height 182 mm × width 233 mm
Ferdinand Bol
Hagar and the Angel at the Well on the Way to Shur
Amsterdam, c. 1640
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: Foolscap with five points and three balls below
Condition
Small fragments of the upper left and right corners missing; the lower left and right corners have been filled in; little tears in the right margin; little holes in the angel’s gown
Provenance
…; collection Graaf Jan Pieter van Suchtelen (1751-1836), St Petersburg (L. 2332); …; collection Remigius Adrianus van Haanen (1812-94), Vienna;1 …; purchased from H. Lang-Larisch, Munich, with nine other drawings, as Rembrandt, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1900;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), as Rembrandt, 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-27
Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
When Sarah was unable to get pregnant, she presented her slave Hagar to Abraham and encouraged her husband to sleep with her. This seemingly simple solution to family planning proved to be torturous for both women. Sarah’s intense jealousy resulted in the dramatic flight of pregnant Hagar. Bol depicted Hagar resting by a well on the road to Shur. The angel at left bids her to return to give birth to Abraham’s son Ishmael (Genesis 16:1-15). Bol here revealed his mastery in the rendering of light and shade. He used fine lines to create shadow in the face of the angel, and coarse pen lines and dabs of the brush to shade the angel’s right wing, Hagar’s back and the well at right.
The drawing was considered to be by Rembrandt, until Münz attributed it to Bol in his seminal article of 1924. Indeed, characteristic for Bol’s draughtsmanship are the expressive hands, the eyes consisting of a little stroke and a circle, the swift yet sometimes hesitant delineation and the use of heavy passages of wash and calligraphic squiggles to close off the composition at both the left and the right. Stylistically it also corresponds to Bol’s drawing of circa 1636 in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 2529), which depicts the second apparition of an angel to Hagar some years later (Genesis 16:7-10).3 In a drawing by Bol from the early 1640s with the same subject-matter as the present sheet, perserved in the New Art Gallery, Walsall (inv. no. 1973.196.GR), the figures are executed more boldly, but the pen lines and washes flanking the composition are unmistakably Bol’s.4
The chronology of Bol’s drawn oeuvre has proved difficult to establish,5 not least because the impact of Rembrandt’s drawing style of the second half of the 1630s – the period during which Bol studied with the master – persisted long after the younger artist’s departure from the studio. The present work in particular displays this impact, and as a result it has traditionally been dated to the late 1630s.6 More recently, specialists have placed the drawing in the early to mid-1640s, though without providing specific reasons.7 A complicating factor is that Bol appears to have looked at this drawing while executing a painting in 1650 with the same subject-matter that is now in the National Museum, Gdansk (inv. no. unknown),8 which has led some authors to regard it as a preparatory study.9
In 2003, Royalton-Kisch made a case for revisiting our view of Bol’s stylistic development as a draughtsman and tentatively suggested dating the present sheet to around the same time as the painting.10 Whereas a comprehensive treatment of Bol’s drawings is indeed sorely lacking, for the moment it still seems likely that in 1650 Bol relied on an older sketch from his early repertoire to execute the later painting, just as he appears to have done with the Rijksmuseum’s drawing of the Finding of Moses (inv. no. RP-T-1930-6). A dating of the present sheet to circa 1640 seems appropriate. By then, Bol was a mature artist at the end of his time in Rembrandt’s studio, who had internalized the master’s idiom, but who was also capable of creating such a delicate and sophisticated work.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Ilona van Tuinen, 2018
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1273 (as Rembrandt); W. von Seidlitz, ‘Die Sammlung der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen von Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot im Haag’, Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, N.S. 28 (1917), p. 251, fig. 3 (as ‘Zeichner des Bischofs in Dresden [238]’); H. Kauffmann, ‘Eine Vorzeichnung Rembrandts zur Dresdener Saskia von 1641’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 41 (1919), p. 56, no. 43 (as Rembrandt); L. Münz, ‘Federzeichnungen von Rembrandt und Bol’, Belvedere 5 (1924), no. 27, pp. 108-11 (as Bol); E.W. Bredt, Rembrandt-Bibel, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1931, vol. II, p. 106 (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. 1, pl. 93, with additional earlier literature; H. van de Waal, ‘“Hagar in de woestijn” door Rembrandt en zijn school’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1 (1947), p. 157, no. 13; W.R. Valentiner, ‘Notes on Old and Modern Drawings. Drawings by Bol’, Art Quarterly 20 (1957), p. 56, fig. 9; S. Slive, Drawings of Rembrandt, with a Selection of Drawings by his Pupils and Followers, 2 vols., New York 1965, vol. II, no. 549; A. Blankert, Ferdinand Bol 1616-1680. Een leerling van Rembrandt, Utrecht 1976 (PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht), p. 136, under no. A1; Nederlandske tegninger (ca. 1600 - ca. 1700) i Nasjonalgalleriet, exh. cat. Oslo (Nasjonalgalleriet) 1976, p. 7, under no. 7; C. van Hasselt, Rembrandt et ses contemporains: Dessins hollandais du dix-septième siècle, Collection Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1977-78, p. 23, under no. 12; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, vol. I (1979), no. 89, with additional earlier literature, p. 370, under no. 173x, p. 384, under no. 180x, p. 390, under no. 183x; A. Blankert, Ferdinand Bol (1616-1689): Rembrandt’s Pupil, Doornspijk 1982, p. 89, under no. 1, fig. 199b; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols., Landau 1983-94, I (1983), p. 293, under no. 89; B.P.J. Broos, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-1992, vols. 1-4’, Oud Holland 98 (1984), pp. 180-81; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, p. 126, under no. 43, fig. A and p. 130, under no. 47; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), p. 94, no. 8; T. Gerszi, Dessins hollandais et flamands. Chef-d’oeuvres du dessin du Musée des Beaux-Arts, Budapest, Budapest 1989, n.p., under no. 49; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, no. 41 (entry by P. Schatborn) and p. 136, under no. 42; I. Oud, ‘De tekeningen van Ferdinand Bol: De relatie tussen de stijl en de functie van de tekeningen’, Kunstlicht 13 (1992), no. 1, pp. 3-5, n. 15 (online); A. Blankert, ‘Rembrandt and his Followers: Notes on Connoisseurship, its Potential and Pitfalls’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Rembrandt and his Pupils: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum Stockholm 2-3 October 1992, Stockholm 1993, pp. 87, 90, fig. 10; E. Pokorny, Niederländische Zeichnungen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Katalog der Graphischen Sammlung des Stadtmuseums Linz-Nordico, vol. 6), coll. cat. Linz 1993, p. 43, under no. 15; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vols. IV and V’, Oud Holland 109 (1995), p. 108, fig. 5; M. van Berge-Gerbaud, Rembrandt en zijn school: Tekeningen uit de collectie Frits Lugt, Paris 1997, p. 69, under no. 27; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 87, under no. 64; A. Strech et al., ‘Nach dem Leben und aus der Phantasie’: Niederländische Zeichnungen vom 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert aus dem Städelschen Kunstinstitut, exh. cat. Frankfurt-am-Main (Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie) 2000, pp. 152, 154 (text by G. Selig), fig. 2; M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘On the Munich Landscape with a Domed Building: An Island of Anonymity?’, in T. Vignau-Wilberg (ed.), The Munich Rembrandt Drawings: Rembrandt and his Followers, Drawings from Munich, Munich 2003, pp. 149-60; F. Duparc, with contributions by G. Seelig and A. van Suchtelen, Carel Fabritius 1622-1654, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 2004-05, p. 89, n. 6, under no. 2; T. Gerszi, 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts: A Complete Catalogue, coll. cat. Budapest 2005, p. 38, under no. 24; J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, p. 40, under no. 35 and p. 157, under no. 232; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 108-09, under no. 34; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011, p. 12, under no. 125; J.L. Leja, ‘Abraham Meeting the Lord and Two Angels: Making the Case for Ferdinand Bol and Workshop’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 5 (2013), no. 2 (online), fig. 11; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, p. 31, fig. 1c; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, pp. 28-31, under no. 1 (text by L. van Sloten), fig. 1c; A.K. Wheelock, Jr. (ed.), The Leiden Collection Catalogue, New York 2017 (online), under ‘Carel Fabritius: Hagar and the Angel, CF-100’, no. 9 (text by D. Surh); P. Schatborn, ‘Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol: Drawings’, in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis/Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, pp. 188-89, fig. 251; N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis/Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, no. 100; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), under no. 0397; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, pp. 47-48, under no. 19, p. 52, under no. 23
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000/I. van Tuinen, 2018, 'Ferdinand Bol, Hagar and the Angel at the Well on the Way to Shur, Amsterdam, c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28408
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