Object data
reed pen and two shades of brown ink, with brown wash and opaque white
height 86 mm × width 51 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
Standing Man Seen from the Side, his Right Arm Raised
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
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inscribed: centre left and right, in brown ink (now practically invisible), A W W and Jode(?){These readings recorded by M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, p. 96.}
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inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower centre, 2636; next to this (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1281
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stamped on verso: centre (twice), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Drawing silhouetted and laid down on another piece of matching paper toned with light brown wash; some erosion in the darkest ink strokes; loss upper left edge
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London, as Rembrandt, with three other drawings, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1902;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-35
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 1633.2 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.3 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 25.4 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 figure has been cut out and silhouetted at shoulder height around his head and hat and pasted onto another piece of paper. His hat was reworked somewhat with light brown ink, which extends onto the background support; this was later corrected with opaque white and dark brown ink. There are also corrections in the figure’s extended right arm and the feet.
Henkel read the word Jode (‘Jew’) inscribed at the upper right. Now only a few letters can be vaguely discerned. In the eighteenth century, small drawings by Rembrandt of bearded men wearing long coats and sometimes turbans were described as ‘Joodjes’ or ‘Smousjes’. They can be found, for example, in the collections of Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1724) and Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731).5 According to the catalogue of Zomer’s collection, compiled circa 1720-24, Album 38 contained ‘[…] Veele, aardige Beeldjes, zoo Joodjes als Jodinnetjes, Persiaantjes, Bedelaartjes, Smousjes, en andere Wandelaartjes, zeer konstig van Rembrand, na’t leven getekent, wel 63 à 64 stuks, en 19 Leeuwen, na ’t leven van ditto’ (‘[...] Many pleasant Figures, both Jews and Jewesses, Persians, Beggars, Yiddish people, and other Wanderers, very inventive by Rembrandt, drawn from life, no fewer than 63 to 64 sheets, and 19 Lions after life by the same’). That such an album usually included not only drawings by the master himself but also copies and possibly drawings by pupils is evidenced by the same catalogue, in which Album 37 is described as containing ‘60 Stuks extra konstige Tekeningen van Rembrant […] zonder een Copy […]’ (‘60 Pieces very artful Drawings by Rembrandt [...] without a single Copy [...]’).6 tekeningen en schoone drukken van prenten […] by een vergadert door Jan Pietersz. Zomer, Amsterdam s.a., p. 28.] From this, one can conclude that the absence of such copies in an album was worth noting.
Still, even without this inscription, the similarity with models by Rembrandt is clear (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1930-55). Like many other Rembrandtesque drawings of standing men in what was traditionally considered ‘oriental’ dress, the museum’s drawing was previously attributed to another pupil of Rembrandt in the late 1640s and early 1650s, namely Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693).7 However, Schatborn tentatively attributed the present sheet and three other drawings in the Rijksmuseum’s holdings (inv. nos. RP-T-1930-42, RP-T-1930-43 and RP-T-1930-44) to Willem Drost.8 For more information on the attribution of these sheets to Drost, see inv. no. RP-T-1930-43.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000
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. 41 (as Rembrandt); C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1281 (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. 6 (as Nicolaes Maes), with additional earlier literature; W. Sumowski, Bemerkungen zu Otto Beneschs “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” II, Bad Pyrmont 1961, p. 20, under no. 1085 (as Nicolaes Maes); W. Wegner, Rembrandt und sein Kreis: Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung) 1966-67, pp. 51-52, under nos. 108 and 113 (as Nicolaes Maes); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, VIII (1984), no. 1988* (as Nicolaes Maes), with additional earlier literature; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, pp. 103, 108, n. 50; W.W. Robinson, ‘Rembrandt’s Sketches of Historical Subjects’, in W. Strauss and T. Felker (eds.), Drawings Defined, New York 1987, p. 257, n. 25 (as not by Nicolaes Maes); H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, p. 142, under no. 45, n. 3; W.W. Robinson, Maes’s Drawings and his Practice as a Draftsman, Cambridge (MA) 1996 (PhD diss., Harvard University), p. 98, n. 7; 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, no. 88 (c. 1650-53)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Standing Man Seen from the Side, his Right Arm Raised, 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.36086
(accessed 13 November 2024 03:25:37).