Object data
reed pen and brown ink, over traces of black chalk or graphite, on paper (non-European?) toned with light brown wash; framing line in graphite
height 123 mm × width 78 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
Standing Man Wearing a Hat and a Short Coat
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
-
inscribed on verso: lower centre, in pencil (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1289
-
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Small holes in the paper; stains in the corners; light foxing throughout1
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-1930-43
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
Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) has long been credited as the author of a large number of studies of single standing male figures, including the present sheet and three other studies in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. nos. RP-T-1930-42, RP-T-1930-35 and RP-T-1930-44). His figures, however, generally have rounder body shapes and are executed with more graceful lines. Maes expert Robinson rejected the traditional attribution to the artist for the whole group.6 Studies like this are difficult to attribute to individual hands because many Rembrandt School artists drew such figure types. However, certain recurring features, such as the delicate parallel hatching, the sharp facial features and the manner of rendering the arms and legs, accord well with drawings now considered to be by Drost – hence Schatborn’s tentative attribution of this and the three other drawings to this artist.7
The small format of these single figure studies may indicate that dealers and collectors cut them from larger study sheets intended as models for pupils to copy for training purposes.8 This is true of the motif of the present sheet, which, as Henkel noted,9 was copied by an anonymous pupil in a sheet now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. 5304),10 which also includes a motif of two oriental figures speaking to each other, copied from another Rembrandt School drawing, formerly with P. de Boer, Amsterdam.11
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); Tentoonstelling van teekeningen van Oud-Nederlandsche meesters, exh. cat. Leiden (Vereeniging die Laecken-Halle) 1903, no. 18 (as Rembrandt); Rembrandt-Hulde te Leiden. Schilderijen en teekeningen van Rembrandt en van schilderijen van andere Leidsche Meesters der Zeventiende Eeuw, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1906, no. 64 (as Rembrandt); C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1289 (as Rembrandt); Korte gids voor het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam 1913, no. 57 (as Rembrandt); H. Kauffmann, ‘Eine Vorzeichnung Rembrandts zur Dresdener Saskia von 1641’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 41 (1919), p. 56, n. 47 (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. 7 (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. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, VIII (1984), p. 4414, no. 1977* (as Nicolaes Maes), with additional earlier literature; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 103, fig. 22; 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); W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584; 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, p. 126, no. 86 (c. 1650-53)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Standing Man Wearing a Hat and a Short Coat, 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.36087
(accessed 23 November 2024 03:28:45).