Study Sheet with Three Lions / recto: Study Sheet with Three Lions

after c. 1615 - before c. 1634

Object data

pen and brown ink, over graphite, on light brown cartridge paper

height 202 mm × width 323 mm

Inscriptions

stamped: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Brown spot lower center left

Provenance

…; sale, Samuel van Huls (1655-1734, The Hague), The Hague (Swart), 14 May 1736 sqq., Album I, no. 378, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘2 avec Ours & des Lions & 2 autres’), with two other drawings, fl. 2:2-;¹ …; sale, Isaac Walraven (1686-1765, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (H. de Winter et al.), 14 October 1765 sqq, no. 933 or 934, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘Een leggende leeuw, met de Pen gearceerd en een weinig rood Kryt. / Een ditto, in dezelve manier.’), fl. 11 for both, to Johan van der Marck Ægzn (1707-72), Leiden;² his sale, Amsterdam (De Winter and IJver), 29 November 1773 sqq., no. 1912 or 1913, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘Een leggende leeuw; met rood en zwart getekent, door denzelven. / Een leggende ditto, met de Pen en rood Kryt getekent, door denzelven.’), fl. 1, to Frederik Willem Greebe (? - 1788), Amsterdam;³…; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 1 March 1819, Album M, no. 49, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘Twee stuks Leeuwen; met ditto, door J. de Ghyn.’), fl. 7, to the dealer Brondgeest (Amsterdam);⁴ …; sale, Isaac Danckerts (1790/91-1848, Amsterdam) et al., Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 3 December 1849 sqq., Album D, no. 130, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘Twee stuks Studiën van liggende Leeuwen, meesterlijk met de pen, door JAC. DE GHYN’), fl. 9, to ‘Roos’;⁵ …; sale, Gérard Leembruggen Jzn (1801-65, The Hague, Lisse and Hillegom), Amsterdam (Roos et al.), 5 March 1866 sqq., no. 255, as Jacques de Gheyn II (‘Etudes de lions. Deux dessins. A la plume.’), fl. 1:50:-, to ‘Jonkers’;⁶ …; ? sale, Leendert Dupper (1799-1870, Rotterdam), Dordrecht (Roos et al.), 28 June 1870, no. 130;⁷ …; sale, J.M. Cr [...] (?-?, Rotterdam), et al., Amsterdam (Roos et. al.), 4 March 1884 sqq, no. 59, fl. 3, to ‘Roos’;⁸ …; collection Carel Vosmaer (1826-88), Montreux;⁹ his son, Prof. Dr Gualtherus Carel Jacob Vosmaer (1854-1916), Leiden; his son, C.J.J.G. Vosmaer (1907-86), Leiden; his heirs; from whom, as Jacques de Gheyn II, fl. 650,000, with 212 other drawings, to the museum (L. 2228), with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Rijksmuseum-Stichting and The Ster Holding BV, 1989

Object number: RP-T-1989-85(V)

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, with additional funding from the Prins Bernhard Fonds, the Rijksmuseum-Stichting and the De Ster Holding BV

The artist

Jacques de Gheyn III (? Haarlem/Leiden, ? 1596 - Utrecht, 1641)

He was the son of the artist Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629) and Eva Stalpaert van der Wiele (?-?). He grew up in The Hague, where his family maintained close ties with the House of Orange and Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687), secretary to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange (1584-1647). Between 1618 and 1620, De Gheyn III was in London with Huygens, whom he accompanied two years later to Stockholm, where he brought eight of his father’s drawings and paintings.¹⁰ It is unclear why this expedition took place and what the outcome was.¹¹ He returned to London in 1622 and stayed there until 1627. While travelling abroad, he visited prominent collections, primarily to study Classical sculpture and further his skills.¹²

From 1627 to 1634, De Gheyn III worked in The Hague, probably alongside his father until the latter’s death in 1629.¹³ They shared a house at the Lange Houtstraat, next door to Constantijn Huygens.¹⁴ In 1634 he moved to Utrecht, where he became canon of the St. Mariakerk.¹⁵

De Gheyn III probably took up drawing at an early age; in drawings by his father, he is represented sketching. His first dated work is from 1614, Father Time, now in the collection of the Koninklijk Fries Genootschap, Leeuwarden.¹⁶ His oeuvre consists primarily of drawings and etchings, the latter considered his most original contribution.¹⁷

As a draughtsman and etcher, De Gheyn III followed in the tradition of his father and Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), who made pen-and-ink drawings, so-called Federkunststücke, that imitated the appearance of prints. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate the drawings of the younger De Gheyn from those of his father, but they are generally coarser in execution and reveal more attention to light and dark contrasts, using heavy pen lines, alternated with finer lines, abundant stipples and short streaks. Over the years, a small oeuvre of drawings has been established.¹⁸ He was also a collector and owned works by Rembrandt (1606-1669). The latter painted his portrait in 1632, now in the collection of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (inv. no DPG099).¹⁹

Constantijn Huygens II (1628-1697), in his autobiography, lamented the sudden breakdown of De Gheyn III’s work, because he had shown such promise as a young artist.²⁰ Indeed, only a few works are known after 1629 when his father passed away. De Gheyn III died on 5 June 1641 in Utrecht.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIII (1920), p. 533 (as Gheyn, Jacob de (3)); F.G. Waller, Biographisch woordenboek van Noord Nederlandsche graveurs, The Hague 1938, p. 110; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), pp. 193-200; H. Möhle, ‘Drawings by Jacques de Gheyn III’, Master Drawings 1 (1963), no. 2, pp. 3-12; I.Q. van Regteren Alterna, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations, The Hague 1983, pp. 109-31; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 307

Entry

In the seventeenth-century, lions were brought by the Dutch East India Company to the Dutch Republic. The Company owned stables to house the exotic animals and they were exhibited at fairs and markets. One could also see them at menageries, such as the one owned by Prince Frederick Hendrik of Orange (1584-1647) in Honselaarsdijk near The Hague, one of the oldest zoos in the Netherlands.²¹ Artists visited these sites to study and draw exotic animals. In the present drawing, the red chalk sketch below the brown ink outlines was probably done from life.

Van Regteren Altena suggested that the red chalk drawing on the recto was made by Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629) and the brown ink lines added by another artist.²². A similarly executed red chalk sketch of a lion’s paw can be found on the verso of De Gheyn II’s Portrait of a Man with a Beard in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1959-160(V)).²³

Interestingly, Van Regteren Altena does not mention that the outlines of the lions are repeated in graphite on the verso and are also finished with brown ink. It is possible that the second artist finished the red chalk drawing with ink, used these lines to trace the lions again on the verso by holding the sheet up to a window. In any case, it seems evident that whoever made these sketches did not see a live animal; while the three lions on the recto are somewhat more lifelike, the pen drawings on the verso are quite naïve.

Since De Gheyn III had direct access to his father’s work, it is quite possible that he added the pen lines on top of a red chalk sketch by his father. The younger De Gheyn’s involvement is further attested by the use of stipples and short pen strokes. Another such example can be found in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 6866), a study sheet of four drawings of an amputated leg, which was initially drawn in chalk (probably by De Gheyn II), with two of the legs finished in similar penwork (probably by De Gheyn III).²⁴

There are two other drawings of lions that are closely comparable: one sheet in the Fondation Custodia (inv. no. 6865)²⁵ and another that belonged to the collection of Van Regteren Altena and was sold at Christie’s in 2014.²⁶

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Literature

I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations, 3 vols., The Hague 1983, no. II 861 (as De Gheyn II and another hand)

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'anonymous, Study Sheet with Three Lions / recto: Study Sheet with Three Lions, after c. 1615 - before c. 1634', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33630

(accessed 15 November 2024 07:33:45).