Elijah Visited by an Angel in the Dessert

Watermark: Crown with a fleur-de-lis

...; by descent through the Ter Borch family to Lambertus Theodorus Zebinden (1809-86), Zwolle;¹¹Note RMA. sale, Jan Hendrik Cremer (1813-85, Brussels) et al. [section L.T. Zebinden], Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 June 1886 sqq., in no. 309, with 770 drawings and prints, fl. 2250 for all, to the Vereniging Rembrandt;²²Copy RMA. from whom, as after Rembrandt, with 617 drawings, 40 prints and one book, fl. 3,522.50 for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1887

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1887-A-1174

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

After the prophet Elijah heard that his life was in danger, he fled into the desert, lay down under a juniper tree and begged the Lord to take his life. He then fell asleep and an angel came to him, twice saying: ‘Arise and eat’. Strengthened by the bread and water that the angel gave him, he then walked for forty days to Mount Horeb (I Kings 19:1-9). In the drawing, Elijah is startled by the arrival of the angel, who has appeared in a ray of light. The desert is depicted as a forest with an elephant in the background. Rembrandt also portrayed this animal in his etching of Adam and Eve of 1638 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1961-992),³³B. 28; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 168. from which this motif was probably borrowed.

The scene has been rendered with fine pen lines over a sketch in graphite, suggesting that the drawing is a copy that was first drawn in that medium. The unsteady pen lines also betray the hand of a copyist. It is not clear whether this copy was made after a drawing by Rembrandt or by a pupil. In an autograph drawing by Rembrandt in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 3564),⁴⁴Benesch, no. 907; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, no. 14. the prophet and the angel have roughly the same poses, but they are seen from the front. Rembrandt’s pupil Willem Drost (1633-1659) also sketched the same subject probably at the same time, since the style of his drawing in the Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-T-1930-13),⁵⁵Sumowski, Drawings, III (1980), no. 555*. is based on that of Rembrandt. The style of the present copy is reasonably close to both Rembrandt and Drost, and the original was presumably also made in the early 1650s. The fact that the figures fuse with the background and that the motif of the elephant was probably borrowed from Rembrandt’s etching makes it unlikely that Rembrandt himself conceived this composition, which is probably the product of a pupil.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

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. 118; 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. 78; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 62, under no. 14, n. 6

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'school of Rembrandt van Rijn, Elijah Visited by an Angel in the Dessert, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1660', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28598