Object data
pen and brown ink, with brown wash and opaque white, on paper toned with light brown wash
height 140 mm × width 107 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Boy Walking with a Stick
Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1640
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: Flail within a chaplet, close to Churchill, no. 544 (1640); Voorn 1960, no. 26 (1641)
Condition
Light foxing throughout
Provenance
...; ? sale, Simon Fokke (1712-84, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Ph. van der Schley et al.), 6 December 1784 sqq., Album O, no. 981 (‘Een dito [studie] met een wandelend Mannetje met een Stok, als dito [met de pen gewasschen].’), with no. 982, fl. 2, to the dealer Yver;1 ...; collection Comte Antoine-François Andréossy (1761-1828), Paris and Montauban;2 ? his sale, Paris (P. Navoit), 13 April 1864 sqq., possibly no. 346 (‘Une Feuille contenant plusieurs croquis à la plume’), 23 frs;3 ...; collection Jean-François Gigoux (1806-94), Paris (L. 1164); ...; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 26 November 1984, no. 26, as school of Rembrandt, fl. 15,000, to the museum (L. 2228)
Object number: RP-T-1984-119
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
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.
Entry
The drawing was discovered by the present writer in 1984, when it was offered at auction as a drawing of ‘a negro boy by an unknown Rembrandt pupil of the second half of the 1630s’. The boy, drawn in profile, is walking with a long stick in his hands. He wears a high cap, which does not cover his ears. He is carrying a flat bag on his back, and a jug is hanging from his waist. Who the boy is and what he is doing are unclear. His prominent lower lip has led to the supposition that he is black; another hypothesis is that he is a leper and the stick he carries was a sort of warning sign that an ‘untouchable’ was approaching.4
The figure has been drawn with iron-gall ink on paper toned with a light brown wash. This type of ink eats into paper, which is why the broad lines have bled slightly. The front of the figure’s trousers and the jug were shaded with the brush; the shadow applied below the jug was later corrected with opaque white. The lines for the most part were incisively drawn. The profile was sketched carefully and with great precision – comparable to the head of a child in a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 3772),5 and the Sketch of a Black Man on the verso of a sheet in the Fodor Collection in the Amsterdam Museum (inv. no. A 10276 verso)6 – but this cannot really be said of the stick, which is not straight. The outlines of the clothing were not indicated with a single contour, but with several strokes over and across each other. This combination of varied lines lends vitality to the drawing without sacrificing three-dimensionality. The manner in which the bent leg was drawn is typical of Rembrandt: a large loop, with a small kink at the back of the knee. A comparable drawing is Boy Walking, in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1910,0212.181),7 which shows a similarly drawn leg. The small loop near the heel is also characteristic of Rembrandt, as can be seen near the toes on the right foot of the Study of Willem Ruyter as a Countryman, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. Dyce.435).8 The surface on which the figure is standing is indicated by a looped line under the right leg and another line under the left leg, which ends in a strong accent, typical of the directness of Rembrandt’s stroke. This can also be seen in the drawing of Woman Leaning on a Window Sill, in the Frits Lugt Collection in the Fondation Custodia in Paris (inv. no. 288).9
The material and techniques with which the present drawing was made were used by Rembrandt in the second half of the 1630s. The watermark, which is partially visible, is found on paper that has been dated 1640 and 1641: A Cow in a Shed (inv. no. RP-T-1930-59) has the same watermark, as does the drawing of Three Studies of a Woman with a Child, in The Morgan Library & Museum in New York (inv. no. I, 190).10 There are many drawings that are similar in style and technique, including both the Rijksprentenkabinet’s Ahasuerus on his Throne (inv. no. RP-T-1930-38), which compares well with the walking boy, and studies of individual figures in other collections, some of which have been cut from larger sheets.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
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. The Hague 1985, no. 13; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 84, under no. 28, p. 85, under no. 29; M. Schapelhouman et al., ‘Aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 49 (2001), nos. 2/3, pp. 285-86 from pp. 280-91; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 54 and 57, fig. 51; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), under no. 25, n. 2; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, no. 33; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online at http://rembrandtcatalogus.net/not-in-benesch/4573690037)
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Boy Walking with a Stick, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28134
(accessed 23 December 2024 11:12:26).