Rembrandt van Rijn

Female Nude Seated in front of a Stove

Amsterdam, c. 1661 - c. 1662

Inscriptions

  • inscribed on verso: lower left, in black ink, Leiden; lower right (with the sheet turned 90°), in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), deGr. 1201

Technical notes

Watermark: Fish within a circle, with the inscription, CARTUS MARIA PARAD (Abbey of the Madonna of Paradise, in Kartuzy, Poland), as in the Lewenhaupt Album, in the Riksarkivet, Stockholm, p. 273 (1613 and 1616)

Condition

Brown stain, lower centre; opaque white oxidized

Provenance

...; from the Prentenkabinet der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden, with an unknown number of other drawings and prints, in exchange for 196 prints, to the museum, 19101Tholen 1994, p. 70.

ObjectNumber: RP-T-00-227

The artist

Biography

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

A nude woman is sitting on a stool in front of a stove. The heel of her right foot is resting on a block, perhaps a book. Rembrandt reworked the figure’s contours rather extensively and corrected some of them with opaque white (e.g. in her proper right shoulder, breasts, forehead and right ankle), but the lead in this pigment has oxidized, making the areas too dark again. The long, zigzag hatches on the legs and her proper left arm are unusual, but can perhaps best be explained by their function. Rembrandt probably decided that the wash shadows on the legs and arm were too strong, causing too distinct a boundary between shadow and light, so he drew the zigzag lines to soften the transition. He made a major change near the shoulder, which was first placed lower. In the background, Rembrandt suggested space, light and shadow with a series of varied, but always nearly transparent layers of wash.

Samuel van Hoogstraten, in his treatise of 1678 entitled Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, mentioned pupils from Amsterdam drawing academies sketching male and female nude models from life, posed by stoves to keep warm.2S. van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, Rotterdam 1678, p. 294; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, p. 150. In the college of painters, drawings of models were also made, probably as an opportunity for the pupils of different artists to draw together.3P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings of the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 21. The certificate that mentions the ‘collegie van schilders’ dates from 1658. Perhaps Rembrandt also attended these sessions with his students. Both he and a pupil drew this model at the same time – whether at the college of painters or in his own studio – since there is a drawing of the same figure in the same pose (but from a slightly different angle), now attributed to Johannes Raven, in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1895,1214.102).4Benesch, no. 1143; P. Schatborn, ‘Rembrandt’s Late Drawings of Female Nudes’, in W. Strauss and T. Felker (eds.), Drawings Defined, New York 1987, p. 316 from pp. 307-19, fig. 13; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), Raven, no. 3; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 43.3. Both drawings used to be considered to be by Rembrandt, but there is a marked discrepancy in quality and it is reasonable to assume that Rembrandt made one drawing and his pupil the other. The style of our drawing is in every way characteristic of Rembrandt, whereas certain aspects of the other one would be unusual for him, especially the heavy, dense wash and the way in which the hands, the feet and the face are rendered. The difference between the two artists can be seen clearly in the representation of the snood or cap: the telling flourish with which Rembrandt depicted this headpiece in our drawing is far removed from the careful, messy lines in the London drawing.

The same confidence is evident in the rendering of the snood worn by the same female nude model, in a different pose, in a drawing by Rembrandt in The Art Institute of Chicago (inv. no. 1953.38).5Benesch, no. 1122; P. Schatborn, ‘Rembrandt’s Late Drawings of Female Nudes’, in W. Strauss and T. Felker (eds.), Drawings Defined, New York 1987, p. 309 from pp. 307-19, fig. 311; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 41.1; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, no. 54. That drawing was probably made around the same time as the Amsterdam study. There is likewise a second drawing of this model in the same pose, once again done at the same time, but from another angle and by a student, now identified as Aert de Gelder, in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. R 1 (PK)).6Benesch, no. 1121; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 185; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 31.2. Both artists used the same brown ink.

Rembrandt made an etching in 1658 showing a partially nude woman by a stove (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-256).7B. 197; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 307. Based on this etching, the Amsterdam drawing was previously dated to 1658,8For example, by M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942. the year he also drew another female study in the Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-T-1917-1). However, the present drawing was carried out on a sheet of paper from an account book, the same type of paper used for two of the preparatory figure studies for the museum’s 1662 painting of the Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild, known as The Syndics (inv. no. SK-C-6),9RRP VI (2015), no. 299 (1662). one of which, the one representing the syndic Jacob van Loon, is in our collection (inv. no. RP-T-1896-A-3172) and the other, representing syndic Volkert Jansz, is in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (inv. no. R 133 (PK)).10Benesch, no. 1180; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 36; 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. 75. The use of account-book paper suggests a later dating for Female Nude Seated in front of a Stove, around the same time as the studies for The Syndics.11Benesch also dated the drawing to 1660-61. Furthermore, there are several stylistic similarities between the seated nude and the drawing of Jacob van Loon; even the colour of the ink is the same. That Rembrandt was then still engaged in the portrayal of the female nude can be shown by the etching of the Woman with the Arrow, dated 1661 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-433).12B. 202; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 313.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1201 (c. 1660); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 41 (1657-58); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1142 (1660-61); 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. 55, 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. 316, fig. 14; S. Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market, Chicago 1988, p. 55, fig. 2.35, and p. 59, fig. 3.6; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, p. 316, under no. 185, fig. b; 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. 156, under no. 51, fig. 51b; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 217, under no. 107, fig. 107a (as Raven?); A. Blankert et al., Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria)/Canberra (National Gallery of Australia) 1997-98, no. 98; E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt, the Printmaker, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/London (British Museum) 2000-01, p. 353, under no. 88, fig. b; J. Lloyd Williams et al., Rembrandt’s Women, exh. cat. Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001, p. 232, under no. 135; T. Vignau-Wilberg, with P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Followers: Drawings from Munich, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2001-02, no. 11; 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. 302, under no. 88, fig. c; S. Hautekeete, with P. Schatborn, Tekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn leerlingen in de verzameling van Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2005, p. 13, fig. 7; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 28-29, fig. 22; D. Bull (ed.), Rembrandt, Caravaggio, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum/Rijksmuseum) 2006, pp. 16-17, fig. 10; S. Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, pp. 116-17, fig. 9.12; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 43.1; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 225-226, under no. 88; M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘Review of H. Bevers et al., Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles 2009-10’, The Burlington Magazine 153 (2011), no. 1295, pp. 101-02 from pp. 97-102, fig. 30 (as School of Rembrandt); P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, p. 96, under no. 29, fig. 29c; J. Bikker et al. Late Rembrandt, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), 2014-15, pp. 56, 68-70, 310, no. 19; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, p. 152, fig. 94

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Female Nude Seated in front of a Stove, Amsterdam, c. 1661 - c. 1662', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28574

(accessed 29 April 2025 20:58:50).

Footnotes

  • 1Tholen 1994, p. 70.
  • 2S. van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, Rotterdam 1678, p. 294; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, p. 150.
  • 3P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings of the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 21. The certificate that mentions the ‘collegie van schilders’ dates from 1658.
  • 4Benesch, no. 1143; P. Schatborn, ‘Rembrandt’s Late Drawings of Female Nudes’, in W. Strauss and T. Felker (eds.), Drawings Defined, New York 1987, p. 316 from pp. 307-19, fig. 13; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), Raven, no. 3; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 43.3.
  • 5Benesch, no. 1122; P. Schatborn, ‘Rembrandt’s Late Drawings of Female Nudes’, in W. Strauss and T. Felker (eds.), Drawings Defined, New York 1987, p. 309 from pp. 307-19, fig. 311; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 41.1; J. Noorman and D. de Witt (eds.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth: Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2016, no. 54.
  • 6Benesch, no. 1121; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 185; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 31.2.
  • 7B. 197; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 307.
  • 8For example, by M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942.
  • 9RRP VI (2015), no. 299 (1662).
  • 10Benesch, no. 1180; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 36; 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. 75.
  • 11Benesch also dated the drawing to 1660-61.
  • 12B. 202; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 313.