Lion at Rest and Sketch of its Hind Quarters

Watermark: None

Light foxing throughout; piece of paper added at lower right

...; collection Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), Augsburg;¹¹According to an inscription on the drawing. acquired from his heirs by Johann August Gottlieb Weigel (1773-1846), Leipzig;²²According to the catalogue for the sale, Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 15 May 1883 sqq., no. 810 his sons, Rudolph Weigel (1804-67), Leipzig, and Theodor Oswald Weigel (1812-81), Leipzig; his sale, Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 15 May 1883 sqq., no. 810, DM 96, to the dealer A. Duss, Stuttgart;³³Copy RKD. ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2634); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 531, as Rembrandt, fl. 200, to the dealer C.F. Roos for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁴⁴According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1895; from whom, fl. 224, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1901-A-4525

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The animals have been drawn with fine lines and evenly spaced pen hatching. The contours are repeated in brush and a patchy wash has been added. There are a few evenly spaced lines to the right of the lion and under his forepaw where the artist probably tried out his brush. The hard contours and regular hatching give the drawing a linear quality. The forms have little plasticity, and the expression of the lion’s fur is not convincing.

In the Recueil de Lions of 1729 by Bernard Picart (1637-1733), there is a print, in reverse, of a lion in the same position (no. C 6; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-51.743).⁵⁵P. Schatborn, ‘Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen van Rembrandt’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 25-28. The rear legs are more clearly depicted in the print, and to judge by the differences it is not at all clear whether the museum’s drawing was the model for this print. Traces of a sketch in graphite under the drawing’s penwork indicate that this is a copy. The Rijkprentenkabinet preserves a copy by Picart of a drawing of Christ and his Disciples (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2284) in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 5279), which Picart believed to be by Rembrandt, but which is now considered to be by Rembrandt’s pupil Arent de Gelder (1645-1727).⁶⁶Sumowski, Drawings, V (1981), no. 1075-b**; and H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, no. 80. Picart’s print after this scene can be found in Impostures innocentes of 1734; P. Schatborn, ‘Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen van Rembrandt’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 31-33. Picart’s copy of Christ and his Disciples, drawn in red, shares a number of stylistic qualities with the present drawing of a lion, such as the wide hatching and the contours repeated with the brush. Based on these analogies, it might be assumed that Picart himself drew the present sheet, but it also could have been made by a different copyist who based himself on the same original drawing as Picart did. Picart himself also made drawings of lion, and included them in his Recueil, alongside prints of lions after Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Rembrandt, and Charles Le Brun (1619-1690).

Eighteen of the prints in the Recueil are based on drawings attributed to Rembrandt,⁷⁷P. Schatborn, ‘Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen van Rembrandt’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), p. 25, n. 107. which Picart himself copied. Among Picart’s copies are sheets in the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA (inv. no. 1965.511);⁸⁸P. Rosenberg, French Master Drawings of the 17th & 18th Centuries in North American Collections / Dessins français du 17ème & du 18ème siècles des collections américaines, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario) and elsewhere 1972-73, no. 110. the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 1066 (PK)) and the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin (inv. no. 1275 Hz).⁹⁹ I. Möller, Niederländische Zeichnungen: 15.- 19. Jahrhundert: eigene Bestände, exh. cat. Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 1982, no. 152, as Frans Snijders (1579-1657). However, while most of the many drawings of lions that correspond to Picart’s prints are in reverse, only a few of these drawings can be convincingly attributed to Rembrandt himself.¹⁰¹⁰P. Schatborn, ‘Beesten nae ‘t leven’, De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 29 (1977), no. 2, nos. 26-30. The other drawings fall into so many categories that it is difficult to determine whether they are copies after Rembrandt, drawings by students or copies after them, or drawings by much later followers. There is no known original drawing by Rembrandt of the present lion. It is also not clear whether the prototype was by Rembrandt, a student, or a follower. Among the pupils to whom drawings of lions have been attributed is Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), to whom Broos assigned a sheet in the Amsterdam Museum (inv. no. TA 10286).¹¹¹¹B.P.J. Broos, Oude tekeningen in het bezit van de Gemeentemusea van Amsterdam waaronder de collectie Fodor, III: Rembrandt en tekenaars uit zijn omgeving, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1981, no. 40. On the basis of the chalk sketch under that drawing, it is likely that it, too, is a copy.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1203 (as Rembrandt); 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. 106 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. C 56 (as copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1650); 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. 107, with earlier literature

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'anonymous, Lion at Rest and Sketch of its Hind Quarters, after c. 1650 - 1699', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28628