Watermark: None

Abrasion of circa 25 mm in diameter at upper centre, visible only from the verso

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 260, with seven other drawings, fl. 171 for all seven, to the dealer G.C.V. Schöffer for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹¹Copy RKD; note RMA. from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2227), 1884

Object number: RP-T-1884-A-369

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

This drawing, formerly attributed to Karel Dujardin (1626-1678), is a copy of a detail in the centre foreground of a drawing by Jacob van der Does, Herdsman and Sheep by a Waterfall (1670), formerly in the collection of Hans van Leeuwen.²²Sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 24 November 1992, no. 53. The present drawing betrays the typical handling of a copyist: cautious lines superficially tracing the animal’s contours, lacking any profound understanding of the texture of a sheep’s fleece. The soft, somewhat blurred appearance of the chalk strokes suggests that a counterproof might have been pulled from the present drawing, possibly in connection with the preparation of a print. A variation of the motif does, in fact, appear, in reverse, in an anonymous print, in which the sheep is shown standing by a goat.³³An impression of the print (105 x 115 mm; inscribed, B. 55) was offered for sale by Antiquariat Martin Barbian & Grund, Saarbrücken, in April 2016, as by Nicolaes Berchem (c. 1621/22-1683), Ziegenfamilie, circa 1670.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

M. Gruijs, De tekeningen van Karel Dujardin (1626-1678), Utrecht 2003 (MA thesis, Universiteit Utrecht), no. IV-7 (not by Karel Dujardin)

A. Stefes, 2018, 'anonymous, Sheep, Lifting its Left Hind Leg, after 1670', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200125762