Rembrandt van Rijn

A Cow in a Shed

Amsterdam, c. 1640

Inscriptions

  • stamped: lower right (effaced), with the mark of Aylesford (L. 58)

  • inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower left, de Cab. de / D Muilman 1773; lower right, 1305

  • stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

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

Condition

Light foxing throughout1Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.

Provenance

...; collection Dionys Muilman (1702-72), Amsterdam;2According to an inscription on the drawing. ? his sale, Amsterdam (J. de Bosch Jerzn et al.), 29 March 1773 sqq., possibly in Album X, nos. 1595-1611 (‘Waarin verscheide Tekeningen’); ...; collection Heneage Finch, 5th Earl of Aylesford (1786-1859), London (L. 58); ? his sale, London (Christie’s), 17 (18) July 1893 sqq., possibly no. 254 (‘Various Sketches, in pen and ink’), £1.5.0, to Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), London;3Copy RKD. ...; purchased from Paul Mathey (1844-1929), Paris, with three other drawings, through the mediation of the dealer P. Roblin (?1853-1908), Paris, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1903;4Hofstede 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-1930-59

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

The artist

Biography

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)

After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.

Entry

The cow in the shed has taken a bundle of hay into its mouth from the trough. In a rather composed arrangement, we see in the foreground a pitchfork in a wheelbarrow, from the corner of which hangs a wooden pail (which has opaque white corrections along its left edge and base). At the left a bearded man in a cap is peering around the corner, presumably directing his gaze at Rembrandt, who must have been drawing from a seated position. The bird perched on the beam is waiting to get a grain of food.

One wonders to what extent a drawing such as this represents a real location. In the 1656 inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions, however, it explicitly states that the animal drawings and the landscapes were drawn ‘from life’.5RD 1656/244, no. 256; RD 1656/249 and RD 1656/261. This probably also applies to A Cow in a Shed. For this drawing, Rembrandt used strong pen lines and extensive multi-directional hatching. As in several others in the same style and technique, he toned the paper light brown. Shortly before or after he drew the cow in the shed, he apparently executed a landscape drawing with cows being milked, a sheet now in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 2314).6Benesch, no. 465; not accepted by Holm Bevers. That landscape, although not universally accepted, belongs in my opinion to a group of works executed around 1640, which can be seen as precursors of the landscape etchings that Rembrandt made in the 1640s. In a small etching from that period, Rembrandt depicted a bull tethered to a rope (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-495).7B. 253; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 259.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1305 (early); 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. 111 (not Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 393 (c. 1633); 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. 15, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 85, under no. 29; A. Röver-Kann, Rembrandt, oder nicht? Zeichnungen von Rembrandt und seinem Kreis aus den Hamburger und Bremer Kupferstichkabinetten, exh. cat. Bremen (Kunsthalle) 2000-01, p. 112, fig. c; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, p. 52, fig. 48; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg, pp. 460-61, under no. 853 (recording Holm Bevers’s doubts concerning the attribution); H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 129, under no. 65; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online, no. 393 (c. 1638-39), and under no. 246

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, A Cow in a Shed, Amsterdam, 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.28136

(accessed 30 April 2025 16:14:26).

Footnotes

  • 1Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.
  • 2According to an inscription on the drawing.
  • 3Copy RKD.
  • 4Hofstede de Groot notes, KB.
  • 5RD 1656/244, no. 256; RD 1656/249 and RD 1656/261.
  • 6Benesch, no. 465; not accepted by Holm Bevers.
  • 7B. 253; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 259.