Object data
pen and brown ink, some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or brush, on paper toned with light brown wash
height 109 mm × width 167 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
Girl Leaning on the Bottom Half of a Dutch Door, Sketches of her Head
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
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stamped: lower left, with the mark of Reynolds (L. 2364); lower right, with the mark of Richardson II (L. 2170)
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inscribed on verso: upper centre, in brown ink, with the mark of Thane (L. 2420); lower centre, in pencil (with the 1906 Hofstede de Groot no.), 1296; next to that, in pencil (with the 1942 Henkel no.), H. 89
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stamped on verso: upper centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None visible through lining
Provenance
…; collection Jonathan Richardson I (1667-1745), London;1 his son, Jonathan Richardson II (1694-1771), London (L. 2170); ? his sale, London (A. Langford), 5 February 1772 sqq. (drawings not specified); …; collection Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), London (L. 2364); ? his sale, London (A.C. de Poggi), 26 May 1794, one of the drawings in Album QQ, nos. 960-85, or Album PP, nos. 987-1009 (drawings not specified); or his sale, London (H. Phillips), 5 March 1798 sqq. (drawings not specified); …; collection Thomas Thane (1782-1837), London (L. 2420); ? his sale, London (Sotheby’s), 25 May 1846 sqq., possibly no. 846, as Rembrandt (‘Three other studies, pen and bistre’); …; purchased from Frederick Leverton Harris (1864-1926), London, as Rembrandt, through the mediation of the dealer F. Lippmann, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1910;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1913, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 19303
Object number: RP-T-1930-50
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
Lugt was inclined to think this drawing was by Barent Fabritius (1624-1673), the brother of Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) who died in the gunpowder explosion in Delft. Henkel retained the old attribution to Rembrandt, but mentioned the drawing’s affinity with the work of Drost. Sumowski rejected the attribution to Fabritius, but did not suggest an alternative author. Schatborn eventually included the sketch in the group of drawings that he attributed to Drost.7 The facial type, in particular, with its sharp, pointed nose, corresponds with that found in other drawings in this group.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000
Literature
Jonkheer H. Teding van Berkhout, 25 teekeningen door Rembrandt uit de verzameling C. Hofstede de Groot, Amsterdam 1913, no. 19 (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. 254 (not Rembrandt); F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre. Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, III: École hollandaise: Rembrandt, ses élèves, ses imitateurs, ses copistes, coll. cat. Paris 1933, p. 52, under no. 1275 (as Barent Fabritius); 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. 89 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A 67 (as Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, IV (1981), p. 1862, under no. 855** (as not by Barent Fabritius); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, pp. 101-03, fig. 18; 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; 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. 125, no. 79; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 81, under no. 39.
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Girl Leaning on the Bottom Half of a Dutch Door, Sketches of her Head, 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.36082
(accessed 13 November 2024 02:42:48).