Watermark: None

Faded; foxing throughout;¹¹Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions. restorations upper left and lower centre edge

…; collection Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-88/89), London (L. 2167); …; collection Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), London (L. 2364); his sale, London (A.C. de Poggi), 26 May 1794, Album QQ, no. 983, as Rembrandt, £ 3.3.0.;²²According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. …; purchased from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, as Rembrandt, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague;³³Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, as Rembrandt, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-13

Credit line: Gift of Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague

Elijah, who was fleeing from Jezebel, went into the desert and begged the Lord to let him die. He was then visited by an angel, who gave him food and water (I Kings 19:1-8). In the drawing, the prophet is kneeling in front of the angel, his hands folded in prayer. The angel raises his right hand and says ‘arise and eat’. After Elijah had eaten, he started the long journey to Horeb, the mount of God.

A drawing by Rembrandt in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 3564) depicts the same subject in a different composition.⁷⁷P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, no. 14. It is dated to the early 1650s, the same period in which Drost was a pupil in Rembrandt’s studio. The sheet probably served as a model for Drost, who did not slavishly copy the composition but created his own invention. Compared to the museum’s drawing, the figures in the Paris sheet are more vigorously drawn and expressive. Rembrandt’s Elijah jumps up and raises both arms in shock at the sight of the angel. Drost drew the prophet seated on his knees in a seemingly calm pose. Moreover, the angel in Rembrandt’s drawing leans forward, gently tapping Elijah on the shoulder, whereas in the present drawing he is standing up straighter. Yet the slightly tilted head of the angel, his hair parted in the middle and his facial features (e.g. the single pen line for his eyebrows) are taken directly from Rembrandt’s drawing. Drost also imitated Rembrandt’s drawing style by alternating between thick and thin strokes of the reed pen. The angel is also reminiscent of a similar figure by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), who studied under Rembrandt about fifteen years earlier than Drost (cf. inv. no. RP-T-1930-27). However, the draughtsmanship of the present sheet, for example the multi-directional hatching and the angular lines, point more in the direction of Drost, as was recognized by both Henkel and Pont.

Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-c. 1788/89), the Dutch-born collector, pastel portraitist and illustrator of medical books active in England during the second half of the eighteenth century, consistently wrote Rymsdyk’s Museum on drawings in his collection.⁸⁸J. Tonkovich, ‘“Rymsdyk’s Museum” Jan van Rymsdyk as a Collector of Old Master Drawings’, Journal of the History of Collections 17 (2005), no. 2, pp. 155-71. A subsequent owner of the present sheet attempted to remove this inscription at lower right. Rijmsdyck’s son, Andreas van Rijmsdyck (d. 1786), also an artist, who was active in Bath, copied motifs from this and other drawings thought to be by Rembrandt when in his father’s collection. As Sumowski noted, in the left background of a signed sheet also now in the Frits Lugt Collection (inv. no. 8584), Andreas recorded the figure of Elijah, his bag and the Bible lying next to him from this sheet.⁹⁹J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, fig. 74; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, no. 23. The sheet is signed on the verso, A.V. Rijmsdijck, after Rembrandt. At centre of the copy is an actor dressed up in the role of Badeloch(?), taken from a drawing in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York (inv. no. I, 177),¹⁰¹⁰J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, no. 214. previously ascribed to Rembrandt, but now recognized as by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674).¹¹¹¹H. Bevers, ‘Early, Rembrandtesque Drawings by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout’, Master Drawings 48 (2010), no. 1, fig. 37. The third figure in Andreas’ drawing, an oriental in a turban, seen from behind, was copied from an unknown drawing, also possibly by Drost.¹²¹²P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, no. 23.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2018

Tentoonstelling van teekeningen van Oude Hollandsche meesters uit de verzameling van Dr. Corn. Hofstede de Groot, exh. cat. The Hague (Haagsche Kunstkring) 1902-03, no. 39 (as Rembrandt); C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1258 (as Rembrandt, c. 1645); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 185 (as Rembrandt, c. 1645); 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. 1; D. Pont, ‘De composities Ruth en Naomi te Bremen en te Oxford: Toeschrijving aan Willem Drost’, Oud Holland 75 (1960), p. 212, no. a; O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A 65 (as school of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, III (1980), no. 555*, with additional earlier literature, and pp. 1206, 1210 and 1212, under nos. 554*, 556* and 557*; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 100, n. 34; J. Tonkovich, ‘‘Rymsdyk’s Museum’ Jan van Rymsdyk as a Collector of Old Master Drawings’, Journal of the History of Collections 17 (2005), no. 2, p. 162, fig. 7; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 62, under no. 14, n. 7; p. 90, under no. 23, n. 2; D.A. de Witt, L. van Sloten and J. van der Veen, Rembrandt’s Late Pupils: Studying under a Genius, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2015, p. 124, no. 52; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 84, under no. 40

B. van Sighem, 2000/J. Shoaf Turner, 2018, 'attributed to Willem Drost, The Angel Appearing to Elijah, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200125075