Object data
pen and brown ink
height 101 mm × width 122 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Amsterdam, c. 1647 - c. 1648
pen and brown ink
height 101 mm × width 122 mm
Watermark: Fragment with the letter M, possibly from an Arms of Basel
...; sale, Lambert Ferdinand Joseph van den Zande (1780-1853, Paris), Paris (F. Guichardot), 30 April 1855 sqq., no. 3042 (‘Étude de deux figures, dont une est la première pensée de la femme malade dans la Pièce de cents florins. A la plume, avec un peu de lavis’), with one other drawing, 80 frs;1 ...; collection Pierre Charles Ernest Deschamps (1821-1906), Paris;2 collection Charles Blanc (1813-82), Paris;3 his sale, Paris (Palais Galliera), 23 June 1964, no. 12, to the museum (L. 2228), with support from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop and the F.G. Waller-Fonds (L. 2760)
Object number: RP-T-1964-127(V)
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds and the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum
Copyright: Public domain
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
The recto of this drawing (fig. a, inv. no. RP-T-1964-127(R)) shows a study for the sick woman in Rembrandt’s most celebrated and complex etching, Christ Healing the Sick, universally known as the Hundred Guilder Print (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-1).4 In the print, the woman appears at the centre of the composition, reclining on a straw mat at Christ’s feet, where she is one of the ‘great multitudes’ who followed him to Judea to be cured. In this single composition, Rembrandt portrayed many episodes from chapter 19 of the Gospel according to Matthew: as well as the healing of the sick (Matthew 19:1-2), he included the blessing of the children (Matthew 19:13-15) and the story of the rich young man (Matthew 19:16-24), who is seated lost in thought at the left, with his hand in front of his face. The presence of a camel on the right alludes to Christ’s final remark from the last episode that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The double-sided drawing in Amsterdam is one of three sheets in which Rembrandt was working out the correct pose for the figure of the sick woman. The other two studies are in the collection of Clement C. Moore II in New York,5 and in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 2695).6 On the recto of the Amsterdam sheet, Rembrandt studied the figure twice: first, on the left, seated in profile, looking up, with both hands around her knees; then, on the right, with her legs slightly extended and her left arm raised, though this, too, was initially drawn in her lap. Below the figure at the left is a crossed-out alternative for her right hand, and at the lower left is another subsidiary sketch for her right foreleg and the same right hand; on the verso is a small sketch of her head. The draughtsmanship of the studies on both sides is sketchy, almost messy, but Rembrandt has managed to achieve clarity by his use of shading and strong accents.
The Berlin drawing – in which the sick woman is seen in the context of the several figures grouped around her – comes closest to the final result in the etching. It must thus be the last in the sequence of the surviving studies, though naturally the motifs are in reverse. Her legs are fully extended, and she leans back, her head and torso supported by the figure behind her. She is just barely able to hold her left arm aloft, and her right arm lies listless at her side. This last detail is still not fully resolved, revealing that Rembrandt was continuing to search for the best position for this arm, as can also be seen in the four separate attempts on the Amsterdam recto.
There is debate around the order of the Moore and Amsterdam studies, but whatever the sequence, they reveal Rembrandt’s penetrating ability to explore, understand and represent the human condition. The artist began by representing the woman still strong enough to sit upright, her illness expressed, above all, by her gaunt features and sunken cheeks, conveyed by means of a short pen stroke in each of the two alternative head studies, the recto of the Moore sheet and the verso of the Amsterdam sheet. Martin Royalton-Kisch7 believes that the study on the left of the Amsterdam sheet, the only one in which her face is largely concealed, came first, and only at a later point did he toy with the idea, in the Moore drawing, of showing her upright with both hands raised and clasped in prayer. In the opinion of Jane Shoaf Turner,8 on the other hand, the Moore study with its praying pose probably came first, but was abandoned when Rembrandt realized that a sick woman might not have had the strength to raise both arms; instead he needed to suggest her weakness through her whole body, not just her face. The series of changes to the position of the legs and arms in the two studies on the Amsterdam recto reveal, in her view, a logical progression that inches ever closer to the Berlin drawing and the final etching. Rembrandt began at the left, with the figure still seated upright, but both hands now in her lap. In the right-hand study, the woman has started to lean back and push her legs out, at first with both hands still down. In a pentiment, however, Rembrandt raised her left hand. This was a critical development, a gesture meant to engage Christ’s attention and to integrate the figure into the larger narrative. She must, after all, compete with the other figures begging to be healed. Finally, in order to further accentuate her enfeebled state, in the Berlin drawing he lowered the hand and fingers to an intermediate position – a subtle shift that emphasizes the apparent gravity of her situation and suggests that she has expended her very last ounce of energy to signal her faith in the Lord. However, as Royalton-Kisch pointed out, the motif of the hands clasped in prayer from the Moore drawing was not wasted, but transferred to the standing figure behind her – a symbol of faith signalled in the etching by the shadow that it casts on Christ’s robe.
There are a few more drawings possibly made by Rembrandt while he was working on the Hundred Guilder Print: one of the feeble man with a stick, standing behind the wheelbarrow, in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. 22891),9 and one in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.188),10 for the standing man with an outstretched arm between Christ and the man with a stick, although the latter link was questioned by some.11 A drawing in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (inv. no. 4713)12 has been linked with the woman and child seen from behind at Christ’s right hand, but that connection is also more tenuous.13
Opinions also differ as to the date of the Hundred Guilder Print, but watermarks on all the early impressions of both states date from circa 1648.14 The difference in style between the left and right side has aroused the suspicion in the past that the etching was made over a period of about ten years. Even though Rembrandt probably worked on this print for an extended period, a comparison with dated prints shows that the most likely dating is approximately 1648. The difference between the left and right side can be explained by the artistic development Rembrandt underwent during his intensive work on the etching rather than by a great difference in time. The rather open and sketchy nature of the strongly lit figures on the left is reminiscent of earlier prints,15 while the steadier handling of the lines on the right, partially limited by the fine work in the shadows, corresponds to the style of his later prints.16 We can thus conclude that the drawings must have been made around 1647-48, although some authors have dated them as early as 1639. The broad, sketchy drawing style, full of contrast, seems to fit in well with drawings from the late 1640s, such as Daniel in the Lions’ Den (inv. no. RP-T-1930-17), Cottage with White Paling among Trees (inv. no. RP-T-1981-1), as well as drawings from the first half of the 1640s, such as The Entombment (inv. no. RP-T-1930-28(R)) and A Man Helping a Rider Mount a Horse (inv. no. RP-T-1930-32(R)).
Peter Schatborn, 2017
O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 183; P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1985, no. 21, with earlier literature; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandt in verband met zijn etsen’, De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 38 (1986), no. 1, pp. 1-38, p. 27, fig. 2; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, p. 299, under no. 168, fig. a; M. de Bazelaire and E. Starcky, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat. Paris 1988-89, p. 50, under no. 39; 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. 244, fig. 27a; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, comp. pl. 7, and p. 102, under no. 38, p. 103, under no. 39, p. 106, under no. 41, p. 110, under no. 42, p. 114, under no. 44, p. 200, under no. 96; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, pp. 180-81; C. White, Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work, New Haven/London 1999 (orig. edn. 1969), p. 59, fig. 72 (c. 1639); P. Jean-Richard (ed.), Rembrandt: Gravures et dessins de la collection Edmond de Rothschild et du Cabinet des Dessins, Département des Arts graphiques du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat. Paris 2000, p. 143, under no. 95; E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt, the Printmaker, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/London (British Museum) 2000-01, pp. 77-79, fig. 20, and p. 256, under no. 61, fig. c (mid-1640s); E. Hinterding et al., Rembrandt: Dipinti, incisioni e riflessi sul ‘600 e ‘700 italiano, exh. cat. Rome (Azienda Speciale Palaexpo/Scuderie del Quirinale) 2002-03, p. 56, fig. 53, and under no. 61, fig. d; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Ostfildern/Berlin 2006, p. 142, under no. 40 (c. 1647-48); M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 79-81, fig. 75 and 78; G. Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, p. 324, fig. 580; S. Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, p. 205, fig. 15.12; G. Schwartz, Ontmoet Rembrandt: Leven en werk van de meesterschilder, Amsterdam 2009, p. 45, fig. 39; V. Sadkov et al., Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, coll. cat. Moscow 2010, p. 208, under no. 321; P. Schatborn, ‘The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, I: Overview’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, pp. 314-15 from pp. 293-322; M. Royalton-Kisch and P. Schatborn, ‘The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, II: The List’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, pp. 323-46, no. 60, figs. 35-36; RRP V (2011), p. 228, fig. 199; J. Shoaf Turner, Rembrandt’s World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection, exh. cat. New York (The Morgan Library & Museum) 2012, pp. 78-81, under no. 31, figs. 2-3; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 0183, with further literature
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Small Study of the Head of the Sick Woman / recto: Studies for the Sick Woman in the ‘Hundred Guilder Print’, Amsterdam, c. 1647 - c. 1648', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28145
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