Watermark: None

…; purchased from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, after 1900;¹¹Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-39

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

The Old, Bearded Man Writing was long considered to be by Rembrandt. There are a few messy areas, but this is not unusual for Rembrandt’s style in the 1640s. There are, however, reasons for assuming that the drawing was made by someone else. First of all, the individual parts of the body are not united into a coherent whole: the right hand holding the pen is not part of the arm and the sleeve does not seem to belong to the body underneath, which is only summarily indicated; the other arm is cut in half by the shadow on the forearm; and the single line indicating the shape of the upper left arm does not seem to connect the upper and lower arms. Although the relation of the head to the shoulders is well-observed, as is the strongly delineated facial area, the lines on the cheek, forehead and chest are fussy and hesitant. The heavier lines of the arm, the hand and the sheet of paper on the table are also somewhat formless, contributing to the unconvincing placement of the figure in space.

The drawing, which was certainly cut from a larger sheet, may have been made in direct imitation of Rembrandt; this can be seen in the strong, emphatic details of the face, which contrast with the rather strange rendering of the fingers. Stylistically, the draughtsmanship shares features with the figure sketches (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1964-127(R)) that Rembrandt made circa 1648 for his Hundred Guilder Print (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-1), but in this case the fragmented sense of structure raises serious doubts – a fault compounded by the unclear way in which the scene is lit. The drawing was probably made by a pupil or follower directly after an example by the master from the 1640s.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, 1285 (as Rembrandt, c. 1635); 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. 84 (as Rembrandt, c. 1635-40); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 690 (as Rembrandt, c. 1643-44); 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. 101, with earlier literature

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'school of Rembrandt van Rijn, Old, Bearded Man Writing, Amsterdam, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118053