Watermark: Flail within a chaplet, close to Churchill, no. 544 (1640); Voorn 1960, no. 26 (1641)

Light foxing throughout

…; ? sale, Simon Fokke (1712-84, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Ph. van der Schley et al.), 6 December 1784 sqq., Album O, no. 981 (‘Een dito [studie] met een wandelend Mannetje met een Stok, als dito [met de pen gewasschen].’), with no. 982, fl. 2, to the dealer Yver;¹¹Copy RMA. …; collection Comte Antoine-François Andréossy (1761-1828), Paris and Montauban;²²According to an inscription on the drawing. ? his sale, Paris (P. Navoit), 13 April 1864 sqq., possibly no. 346 (‘Une Feuille contenant plusieurs croquis à la plume’), 23 frs;³³According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. …; collection Jean-François Gigoux (1806-94), Paris (L. 1164); …; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 26 November 1984, no. 26, as school of Rembrandt, fl. 15,000, to the museum (L. 2228)

Object number: RP-T-1984-119

The drawing was discovered by the present writer in 1984, when it was offered at auction as a drawing of ‘a negro boy by an unknown Rembrandt pupil of the second half of the 1630s’. The boy, drawn in profile, is walking with a long stick in his hands. He wears a high cap, which does not cover his ears. He is carrying a flat bag on his back, and a jug is hanging from his waist. Who the boy is and what he is doing are unclear. His prominent lower lip has led to the supposition that he is black; another hypothesis is that he is a leper and the stick he carries was a sort of warning sign that an ‘untouchable’ was approaching.⁴⁴M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006.

The figure has been drawn with iron-gall ink on paper toned with a light brown wash. This type of ink eats into paper, which is why the broad lines have bled slightly. The front of the figure’s trousers and the jug were shaded with the brush; the shadow applied below the jug was later corrected with opaque white. The lines for the most part were incisively drawn. The profile was sketched carefully and with great precision – comparable to the head of a child in a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 3772),⁵⁵Benesch, no. 223 recto; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Ostfildern/Berlin 2006, no. 23. and the Sketch of a Black Man on the verso of a sheet in the Fodor Collection in the Amsterdam Museum (inv. no. A 10276 verso)⁶⁶Benesch, no. 714 verso; B.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. 15 verso. – but this cannot really be said of the stick, which is not straight. The outlines of the clothing were not indicated with a single contour, but with several strokes over and across each other. This combination of varied lines lends vitality to the drawing without sacrificing three-dimensionality. The manner in which the bent leg was drawn is typical of Rembrandt: a large loop, with a small kink at the back of the knee. A comparable drawing is Boy Walking, in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1910,0212.181),⁷⁷Benesch, no. 242; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), no. 25. which shows a similarly drawn leg. The small loop near the heel is also characteristic of Rembrandt, as can be seen near the toes on the right foot of the Study of Willem Ruyter as a Countryman, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. Dyce.435).⁸⁸Benesch, no. 235; J. Shoaf Turner and C. White, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, coll. cat. London 2014, no. 160. The surface on which the figure is standing is indicated by a looped line under the right leg and another line under the left leg, which ends in a strong accent, typical of the directness of Rembrandt’s stroke. This can also be seen in the drawing of Woman Leaning on a Window Sill, in the Frits Lugt Collection in the Fondation Custodia in Paris (inv. no. 288).⁹⁹Benesch, no. 253; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, coll. cat. 2 vols., Bussum/Paris 2010, no. 7.

The material and techniques with which the present drawing was made were used by Rembrandt in the second half of the 1630s. The watermark, which is partially visible, is found on paper that has been dated 1640 and 1641: A Cow in a Shed (inv. no. RP-T-1930-59) has the same watermark, as does the drawing of Three Studies of a Woman with a Child, in The Morgan Library & Museum in New York (inv. no. I, 190).¹⁰¹⁰Benesch, no. 226; J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, coll. cat. 2 vols., New York 2006, no. 209, with the watermark repr. There are many drawings that are similar in style and technique, including both the Rijksprentenkabinet’s Ahasuerus on his Throne (inv. no. RP-T-1930-38), which compares well with the walking boy, and studies of individual figures in other collections, some of which have been cut from larger sheets.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

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. 13; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 84, under no. 28, p. 85, under no. 29; M. Schapelhouman et al., ‘Aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 49 (2001), nos. 2/3, pp. 285-86 from pp. 280-91; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 54 and 57, fig. 51; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), under no. 25, n. 2; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, no. 33; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online at http://rembrandtcatalogus.net/not-in-benesch/4573690037)

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Boy Walking with a Stick, 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/200117718