Two Horses at a Halting-place

Entry

Two dray-horses are being unhitched from a cart. One figure (it is unclear whether male or female) feeds fodder to one of the animals from a trough, while the drayman standing on the footboard is either laying a blanket over the other horse or drying it.

The drawing was started in black chalk, and the head and neck of the nearest horse were later worked up in red chalk. It has been suggested that this was done later, in the eighteenth century,² probably because the fine drawing style in red differs from the sketchy and occasionally angular passages done in black chalk. Rembrandt seems to have executed the black chalk passages rather quickly, perhaps when he saw this scene in situ in town or in the countryside. The two figures, the trough, the lightly-sketched legs of the rear animal and the cart have all been indicated in a very cursory way. The horse in the foreground was more fully worked out, but only the general shape of its head, eye and nostrils were indicated in black. The difference in style between the areas in red and black chalk can possibly be explained by a difference in time and purpose. Rembrandt probably worked up the drawing with red chalk some time later because he realized that the central area of the composition was too empty and nondescript. He corrected this fault not only by further developing the head, but also by choosing red chalk to do this. As usual when reworking a drawing, he made changes: the ears were enlarged and the contour of the neck was adjusted.

Based on the similar style of a black chalk drawing of an elephant, signed and dated 1637, in the Albertina in Vienna (inv. no. 17558),³ the Rijksmuseum sheet must have been made around the same time, although a dating during the Leiden period (1625-31) has also been suggested.⁴ In the second half of the 1630s, Rembrandt often drew in red chalk, and there are sketches of Saskia, such as one now in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.183),⁵ and Two Studies of a Sleeping Child, in a private collection in Basel,⁶ that show sufficient similarities with their fine chalk lines to the red chalk of the horse’s head to allow us to confirm the attribution and to assign the sheet to the same period. The combination of black and red chalk can repeatedly be seen in early figure studies from the Leiden period,⁷ as well as in one drawing of a Horse Lying down, in the British Museum in London (inv. no. Ff,4.121), previously attributed to Jan Lievens but convincingly reassigned to Rembrandt by Martin Royalton-Kisch, who dated it circa 1626.⁸ If horses are rarely represented in Rembrandt’s drawings, they do appear in his earliest paintings and etchings, and in his later work. The Amsterdam drawing is certainly not a study in the strict sense of the word, but is part of a series depicting different animals drawn naer ’t leven (from life), which were later brought together in an album ‘full of drawings by Rembrandt of animals sketched from life’, as documented in the 1656 bankruptcy inventory.⁹

Peter Schatborn, 2017