Ahasuerus on his Throne

Watermark: None visible through lining

Laid down on fragment of old mount; damage (bleeding and degradation of the paper) from iron-gall ink

...; purchased from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1903;¹¹Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1930-38

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

As first identified by Otto Benesch, the drawing represents King Ahasuerus sitting on his throne wearing his royal robes and holding a knife in his right hand.²²Hofstede de Groot, on the other hand, identified the figure as a rabbi holding a sceptre. C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906. The king, seated at a table, had just learned from his Jewish wife, Esther, that his confidant Haman has ordered the extermination of the Jews. Ahasuerus exploded in fury and eventually ordered Haman to be executed (Esther 7:1-10).

Neither Esther nor Haman is shown in the drawing; the king is depicted alone, as if sitting for a portrait. The model for the figure was probably the actor Willem Bartholsz Ruyter (see also inv. no. RP-T-1996-6). It was not unusual for Rembrandt to take one figure out of the context of a larger story. Ahasuerus is often portrayed with a sceptre, so the identification of the object in his hand as a knife is unusual. However, in a painting by Rembrandt’s student Aert de Gelder, in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (inv. no. 216-4),³³Sumowsk, Gemälde, II, no. 727. Ahasuerus is holding a knife in his hand, much larger and more obvious than in the drawing, so perhaps De Gelder borrowed this motif from Rembrandt.

Unfortunately, the drawing is in poor condition. The iron-gall ink has bled in several places and damaged the paper, and the opaque white pigment that Rembrandt used to cover the ink has turned yellow. The paper itself was firstly toned with a light brown wash, just as Rembrandt did in a number of drawings from his Leiden period (1625-31), a practice that Rembrandt took over from his teacher, Pieter Lastman, who used red chalk on yellow toned paper.⁴⁴P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings of the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 47, 48 and 51. The drawings in chalk on toned paper from the Leiden period are Benesch, nos. 7, 18, 20, 39 and 41. Because the yellowish colour of Rembrandt’s paper is not as pronounced as it was with Lastman, it is often considered to be the result of discolouration rather than deliberate preparation, and thus often goes unmentioned.⁵⁵See P. Schatborn, ‘Een figuurstudie met rood krijt van Pieter Lastman’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 32 (1984), no. 1, pp. 25-27.

Besides using toned paper during his Leiden period, the technique of drawing on toned paper characterizes a group of documented works by Rembrandt from the second half of the 1630s, the period to which Ahasuerus on his Throne must belong. Two drawings from this group – one in the collection of Werner H. Kramarsky in New York, and the other in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 1958/T 32 verso)⁶⁶Benesch, nos. 168 and 161. – were made in connection with Rembrandt’s etching Joseph Telling his Dreams from 1638 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-75).⁷⁷B. 37; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 167. Two others, both in the British Museum in London, are related to works from circa 1639: the first (inv. no. 1891,0713.9)⁸⁸Benesch, no. 442; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), no. 23. is a preparatory study for the painted portrait of Maria Trip in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-C-597),⁹⁹RRP III (1989), no. A 131; RRP VI (2015), no. 184b (1641?). and the other (inv. no. Gg,2.248)¹⁰¹⁰Benesch, no. 423; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), no. 24. was made in connection with the etching Artist Drawing a Model (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1882-A-6184).¹¹¹¹B. 192; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 176.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1284 (c. 1635); 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. 13 (1633-34); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 85 (1633-34); 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. 10, with earlier literature; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, p. 39, fig. 33; P. Schatborn and M. de Winkel, ‘Rembrandts portret van de acteur Willem Ruyter’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 44 (1996), no. 4, p. 391 from pp. 382-93, fig. 6; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 0085, with further literature

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Ahasuerus on his Throne, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28130