Reclining Lion

Entry

When artists wanted to portray exotic animals in biblical or other scenes, they often had to rely on printed or drawn models by colleagues or earlier artists. Only rarely were they fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study and draw such wild live animals themselves. Willem Goeree (1635-1711), in his instruction manual entitled Inleydinge tot de practijck der alghemeene schilder-konst (1670), urged artists not to miss such opportunities: ‘It is of great importance to seize the chance to see the rarities, such as lions, tigers, bears, elephants, camels and such beasts as one seldom sets eyes upon, and which one nonetheless needs to use in one’s inventions from time to time.’⁴

We know that wild animals and birds brought by sailors from distant countries were often exhibited at fairs and markets,⁵ and that the Dutch East India Company had stables in which these live animals were kept. There were also a few menageries, such as the one owned by Frederick Henry in Honselaarsdijk, near The Hague, one of the oldest zoos in the Netherlands. In addition, exotic species arrived from abroad as taxidermied specimens or were stuffed after their death in the Netherlands, and these preserved examples were copied by artists. Rembrandt, for example, had a stuffed bird of paradise in his collection of curiosities, and he made a drawing of it, now in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. RF 4687),⁶ as if it were still alive. As the 1656 bankruptcy inventory shows, he kept his sketches of animals drawn from life in an album.⁷ We do not know if this album contained animal studies of both domestic and wild creatures, but there are surviving drawings by him of domestic animals such as pigs, dogs, horses (see inv. no. RP-T-1961-77) and cows (see inv. no. RP-T-1930-59), as well as exotic animals such as camels, elephants and – most numerous of all – lions.

Rembrandt probably sketched lions together with his students, since many such studies formerly attributed to him – including the present sheet – are now considered to be the work of pupils or followers (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1901-A-4525, RP-T-1930-58, RP-T-1889-A-2044 and RP-T-1948-408). Most of the lions sketched by Rembrandt and his school were done in pen and brush, but a few were also drawn in black chalk or only in pen (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4524). The reclining lion in the present drawing, with its head resting on its forelegs, was done mostly with the brush after the outlines of the head and forelegs had been sketched with the pen. Corrections were made in opaque white near the animal’s mouth. The difference between the two eyes is striking – one seems open, the other closed. The shape of the lion’s back was indicated with a very dry brush, whereas a rather wet brush was used for the shadows on the underside of the body: in this way, the artist conveyed the suppleness of the skin.

A second version of this lion is known, which in 1985 was on offer by the Artis Group, New York.⁸ The animal’s body is shorter, the brushstrokes are less sketchy and there are no corrections in white near the mouth. In the second drawing, we can see the small pupils of the eyes, whereas they are totally absent from the Amsterdam drawing. The artist who made the second drawing may have derived this motif from another drawing by Rembrandt and added them for the sake of clarity. The Amsterdam drawing could also be considered a copy in which the pupils of the original were not transcribed or else not clearly indicated. In one of the finest lion drawings, in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. RF 4721),⁹ the animal’s pupils do play an important role in the expression and characterization of the head. The present drawing reflects Rembrandt’s style of the 1650s.

Peter Schatborn, 2018