Object data
reed pen and brown ink, with brown wash, some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or dry brush, on paper toned with light brown wash
height 159 mm × width 216 mm
Willem Drost (attributed to)
David Playing his Harp before Saul, with a Servant and Other Musicians
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: Fleur-de-lys within a shield
Provenance
…; collection Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), London (L. 2364); ? his sale, London (A.C. de Poggi), 26 May 1794, possibly 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 Edward Vernon Utterson (1775/76-1856), London (L. 909); ? his sale, London (Christie’s), 24 February 1857 sqq., possibly no. 541, as Rembrandt; …; collection Francis Abbott (1801-93), Edinburgh;1 his sale, Edinburgh (Dowell), 22 January 1894 sqq., no. 371, as Rembrandt, £ 12.12.0;2 …; sale, Comte Louis-François de Robiano (1785-1855, Brussels) et al., Amsterdam (A.W.M. Mensing), 15 June 1926 sqq., no. 424, as Rembrandt, fl. 2,600, to the dealer E.J. van Wisselingh, Amsterdam;3 …; collection Léonardus Nardus (1868-1955), New York, Paris and Tunisia;4 …; with the dealer J. Walter, Kasteel Heijen, Gennep, by 1962;5 from whom, as school of Rembrandt, fl. 5,000, to the museum (L. 2228), 1963
Object number: RP-T-1963-271
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - Venice 1659)
He was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, on 19 April 1633.6 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.7 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 25.8 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
The drawing, which is traditionally attributed to Rembrandt or Jan Victors (1619-1676), can be given to Drost, as was suggested by Schatborn in 1985. Characteristic for him are the rather squat-looking figures with pointy features, which are drawn with sketchy lines of althernating thickness.
A copy of this drawing in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin (inv. no. 16521),9 which has extensive passages of wash, extends further to the right, indicating that the Amsterdam sheet has been cut down on that side. The Turin copy includes a third full figure at right (almost completely missing here), who is also playing a flute. There are other minor differences, for example the architecture in the background, and the hairstyle of the servant and the muscisians. In the present drawing, they seem to be wearing turbans, whereas in the Turin sheet three of them have shoulder-length curly hair.
The scene is traditionally described as David Playing his Harp before Saul (I Samuel 16:23). There is a degree of doubt over this identification. Saul appointed David as his personal musician to alleviate his spells of melancholy with harp music, which certainly explains the prominent harp-playing figure at lower right. Yet that story does not usually include flautists, and one would expect that the main figure seated at the table, if Saul, would be wearing a crown or turban rather than the type of headgear known as a Tellerbarret (platter or pizza hat). His expression is rather vacuous, whereas Saul’s black mood is usually conveyed by a brooding expression or pose. On balance, however, this remains the most plausible interpretation of the subject.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000
Literature
W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Des Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), pp. xxviii-xxix, fig. 25 (as Jan Victors?); 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. 56, under no. 1291 (not Rembrandt); “Aanwinsten,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 11 (1963), p. 124 (as pupil of Rembrandt); Jaarverslag 1963, pp. 72, 74, repr. (as school of Rembrandt); G.C. Sciolla, ‘Disegni Rembrandtiani a Torino’, Critica d’Arte 19 (1972), no. 126, p. 74, n. 2 (no attribution); G.C. Sciolla, I disegni di maestri stranieri della Biblioteca Reale di Torino: Catalogo, coll. cat. Turin 1974, p. 277, under no. 240 (as Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, IV (1981), p. 1887, no. 9 (as anonymous school work of the 1650s); V (1981), p. 2348, under no. 1055b* (as works by Drost are related, but dissimilar); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 101, fig. 15; W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584; G.C. Sciolla, Nuove ricerche in margine alla mostra: Da Leonardo a Rembrandt. Disegni della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, Turin 1990, p. 336, fig. 9; 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; G.C. Sciolla, with P.G. Tordella, I disegni fiamminghi en olandesi della Biblioteca Reale di Torino (Rariora et Mirabilia, vol. 7), coll. cat. Turin 2007, p. 92, fig. 67a; 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. 16 (c. 1650-53)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, David Playing his Harp before Saul, with a Servant and Other Musicians, 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.34316
(accessed 23 November 2024 10:11:14).