Watermark: Letters PR

Light foxing throughout

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 425, as school of Rembrandt, with six other drawings, fl. 180 for all, to the dealer J. de Vries for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹¹According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom purchased by the museum (L. 2228), 1891

Object number: RP-T-1891-A-2421

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The subject of the drawing has been interpreted as Haman kneeling in disgrace before Esther and Ahasuerus,²²C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, p. 266, under no. 1162; K. Freise, K. Lilienfeld and H. Wichmann, Rembrandts Handzeichnungen, I: Rijksprentenkabinet zu Amsterdam, coll. cat. Parchim im Mecklenburg 1921 (orig. edn. 1912), p. 11, under no. 6; O. Benesch, Rembrandt: Werk und Forschung, Vienna 1935, p. 38; J. Rosenberg, ‘Review of O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London 1954-1957, vols. 3/4’, The Art Bulletin 41 (1959), p. 113; W. Sumowski, Bemerkungen zu Otto Beneschs “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” II, Bad Pyrmont 1961, p. 12. as Esther before Ahasuerus³³W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), p. 475, under no. 198; K. Bauch, Die Kunst des jungen Rembrandt, Heidelberg 1933, p. 227-8. and as Mordechai before Esther and Ahasuerus.⁴⁴M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, p. 51, under no. 103. These various interpretations have arisen because the manner in which the figures are rendered is unclear: to the right we see a man who could be Ahasuerus, seated on a throne and wearing a turban. To his left there is a veiled figure, probably Esther. A third figure who also seems to be wearing a veil is kneeling to the left of the table. If the other identifications are correct, this figure must be Haman or Mordechai. Rembrandt and his pupils often depicted the scene in which Ahasuerus became angry with Haman when he hears from Esther that Haman has ordered the execution of all the Jews. It is therefore possible that the museum’s drawing depicts the same scene (cf. inv. nos. RP-T-1951-15 and RP-T-1889-A-2059(v)).

The figures are seated on a dais under a baldachin, with a doorway on the left. The scene has been very concisely sketched with a few uniform lines of parallel hatching for the shaded areas. The forms are open and flat. Most authors no longer regard this drawing as a work of Rembrandt, but Benesch always retained the attribution to the master. There is a drawing of the Presentation in the Temple, in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. D 2842), attributed to Rembrandt’s pupil Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674),⁵⁵Sumowski, Drawings, III (1980), no. 762*. which shows the same economical treatment of the composition. The division of space is also comparable to a few of Van den Eeckhout’s paintings, such as the Presentation in the Temple, in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (inv. no. 1638), and Joseph Presenting his Father, Jacob, to Pharaoh, whose whereabouts are unknown.⁶⁶Sumowski, Gemälde, II (1984), nos. 456 and 457. It is an open question as to whether these similarities are sufficient to justify an attribution to Van den Eeckhout for the present sheet. The Edinburgh drawing, the other comparable drawings by Van den Eeckhout and the compositionally related paintings can all be dated to the mid-1660s.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1162 (as Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 198 (as Rembrandt?, c. 1630); 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. 103 (as not by Rembrandt, c. 1645); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 571 (as Rembrandt, c. 1645); 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. 80, with earlier literature

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'school of Rembrandt van Rijn, Banquet of Esther, Ahasuerus and Haman, Amsterdam, c. 1665', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118031