Object data
reed pen and brown ink, on paper toned with light brown wash; traces of framing line in brown ink (almost entirely trimmed)
height 95 mm × width 57 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
Standing Man, with Arms Akimbo
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
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inscribed on verso: lower centre, in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, abr […]; below that, in pencil (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1288; lower left, in pencil, 2636
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stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
A few stains; light foxing throughout;1 and some paper restorations
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;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-42
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 1633.3 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.4 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 25.5 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
This small sketch is one of several examples of drawings now attributed to Drost, whose motifs are known in a second version or copy. Such repetitions imply that the sheets – and the prototypes – were produced in the context of training exercises for pupils within Rembrandt’s studio.6 A similarly dressed and posed figure, with minor differences, occurs along with another man in oriental costume and a tall, round hat in a drawing in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O*041).7 Both sheets were assigned to Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) by Valentiner in 1924, a traditional attribution retained by Sumowski, among others, but rejected for the whole group of single figure studies by Maes expert Robinson. In 1985, Schatborn tentively attributed the present drawing and three other drawings in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. nos. RP-T-1930-35, 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.
The nature and extent of differences between the Amsterdam and Haarlem drawings may suggest that both are copies of a lost original. The contour lines in the Haarlem drawing are more distinct, its shapes slightly rounder and there are fewer passages of tight parallel hatching. They could nevertheless be by the same hand, for the similarity between the faces is striking. However, the author of the present drawing had more difficulty with rendering anatomy, as can be seen in the figure’s badly misunderstood right foot (which looks like a fold of drapery rather than a shoe or boot planted firmly on the ground).
Rembrandt’s commitment to having his pupils copy works in his studio is thought to have influenced the text of the painting treastise of his later pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (‘Introduction to the Academy of Painting’), where, for instance, Hoogstraten recommends that students should: ‘Copy the things, not only as you see them before you, but investigate for yourself where their merit lies. Learn so from time to time to enrich your mind with beautiful things so that in turn you will be able to bring forth your own inventions.’9
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. 41 (as Rembrandt); Tentoonstelling van teekeningen van Oud-Nederlandsche meesters, exh. cat. Leiden (Vereeniging die Laecken-Halle) 1903, no. 18 (as Rembrandt); C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1288 (as Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Nicolaes Maes, Stuttgart/Berlin/Leipzig 1924, p. 55 (as Nicolaes Maes); 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. 5 (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); J. Bolten, Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot: Groninger Museum voor Stad en Lande, Utrecht 1967, p. 98, under no. 66 (as Nicolaes Maes); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, VIII (1984), no. 1983*, and p. 4426, under no. 1982* (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; C. Brown et al., Rembrandt: His Teachers and his Pupils, exh. cat. Tokyo (Bunkamura Museum of Art) and elsewhere 1992, p. 257, under no. 104 (as Nicolaes Maes); W.W. Robinson, Maes’s Drawings and his Practice as a Draftsman, Cambridge (MA) 1996 (PhD diss., Harvard University), p. 98, n. 7; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 232, under no. 248; 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. 122, no. 9; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 86, under no. 41
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000/J. Shoaf Turner, 2018, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Standing Man, with Arms Akimbo, 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.36084
(accessed 27 November 2024 16:41:16).