Watermark: None

Water stains throughout; folds (vertical), centre right

…; collection William Mayor (? - 1874), London (L. 2639); …; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450), by 1868;¹¹Vosmaer 1868, p. 516. his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 421, as Rembrandt, fl. 100, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;²²Copy RKD. …; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, with two other drawings, fl. 480 for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1897

Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3202

Assembled on one sheet are several vignettes: at centre two men are conversing; on the left a boy and a dog are standing between a door jamb and a rail; and on the right is a profile head of a man wearing a cap with ear-flaps. All the sketches are drawn with a reed pen, creating broad, dark strokes, as well as split and broken lines with very little ink. The irregularity in the handling of the media does not make the figures convincing, especially since the play of light was not taken into account.

Wichmann’s former attribution to Rembrandt’s pupil Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) is no longer accepted, for the drawing is generally dated later than circa 1650 (the period when Maes was in the studio). A Rembrandt drawing that is comparable in style is the Woman with Urinating Child and a Horse’s Head (inv. no. RP-T-1955-48), which is datable circa 1657-62. Other autograph figure sketches by Rembrandt, such as the man on crutches drawn twice with another beggar on a sheet of circa 1658-60 in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 3108),³³Benesch, no. 1141; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Berlin 2006, no. 53. were probably the type of models on which the Rembrandt school pupil or follower based the museum’s drawing.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1192 (as Rembrandt); H. Wichmann, ‘Review of W.R. Valentiner, Nicolaes Maes, Berlin/Leipzig 1924’, Der Cicerone 16 (1924), p. 780 (as Nicolaes Maes); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, no. 36 (as Rembrandt, end of 1650s); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1148 (as Rembrandt, c. 1660-62); 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. 97, with earlier literature; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Berlin 2006, p. 180, under no. 53, n. 8

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'school of Rembrandt van Rijn, Boy with a Dog, Two Men Talking and a Profile Head of a Man, Amsterdam, c. 1657 - c. 1662', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118050