Watermark: None

Fold (vertical), centre right

…; collection Auguste Constantin (1824-95), Paris, until 1865;¹¹According to an inscription on the old mount. …; collection Maurice Marignane (1879-?), Paris (L. 1872); his son, Hubert Marignane (1921-?), Paris and Menton (L. 1343a); …; from the dealer Franklyn, London, as Rembrandt van Rijn, fl. 4,400, to the museum (L. 2228), 1956

Object number: RP-T-1956-4

Two women are kneeling in front of an army commander on horseback, while horsemen and foot soldiers wait in the rear. In the foreground is another horseman, as well as a few soldiers and a dog. The foreground figures are arranged diagonally across the paper, a compositional technique that harks back to early works by Rembrandt and to paintings by his teacher, Pieter Lastman (1583-1663). Rembrandt’s History Painting (1626), on loan to the Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden (inv. no. B 564), has a partially similar composition.²²RRP, I (1982), no. A 6; VI (2015), no. 7. This, in turn, was inspired by Lastman’s Roman Women Kneeling before Coriolanus (1625) in the Provost’s House, Trinity College, Dublin (inv. no. unknown).³³C.T. Seifert, Pieter Lastman: Studien zu Leben und Werk mit einem kritischen Verzeichnis der Werke mit Themen aus der antiken Mythologie und Historie, Petersberg 2011, no. A10.

There are several interpretations of the scene; the most likely is that it portrays the Offering of Abigail (I Samuel 25). Abigail is persuading David not to march against her husband, Nabal, who had earlier refused to supply David's band of outlaws with food and drink. The two jugs in the foreground might be the two bottles of wine that Abigail offered David, along with two hundred loaves of bread. On learning the next day of Abigail’s offering, Nabal had a stroke and died, and Abigail soon become one of David’s wives.

There is a comparable early compositional drawing, clearly by the same hand, in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 22949), which Lugt suggested also represents the Offering of Abigail.⁴⁴F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre. Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, III: École hollandaise: Rembrandt, ses élèves, ses imitateurs, ses copistes, coll. cat. Paris 1933, no. 1240; Benesch, no. 01A; H. Bevers, Aus Rembrandts Zeit: Zeichenkunst in Hollands Goldenem Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) 2011-12, fig. 28. Formerly given to an anonymous member of the Rembrandt school, in 2011 this was convincingly reattributed to Rembrandt’s pupil Jan Victors by Bevers, who entitled the drawing Roman Women Kneeling before Coriolanus. This implies that the present sheet is likely also by Victors. The attributions to Victors are supported by a group of large, double-sided drawings with wash compositions, like the present one, on one side and pen-and-ink sketches in the style of Rembrandt on the other. Examples include a sheet in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 8767r and 8767v),⁵⁵H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an "Oeuvre" of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, figs. 14-15. and one in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 5662).⁶⁶H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an "Oeuvre" of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, fig. 13; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, no. 105.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 01B (as Rembrandt); 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. 77 (as a pupil of the Leiden period), with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 01B (as a pupil from the Leiden period)

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'attributed to Jan Victors, Offering of Abigail / verso: Unrecognizable Sketch, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118028