Group of Figures at a Table in the Garden of a Tavern

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: centre right, in brown ink (with the sheet turned 90°), b. B· (L. 347); centre left, in pencil, Rembrandt; lower centre, in greyish brown ink, N1000 T K I
stamped on verso: centre left (twice), with the mark of Glüenstein (L. 123); lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); below this, with the mark of the F.G. Wallerfonds (L. 2760)

Technical notes

Watermark: None visible through lining

Condition

Vertical cut left of centre; light foxing throughout; the lining on the left half of the sheet has been partially removed

Provenance

…; collection Adolf Glüenstein (1849-circa 1917) Hamburg (L.123)…; collection [dealer] C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf;¹Note RMA. …; the dealer Dr Carl Richartz, Amsterdam; [from whom?] purchased, as Rembrandt van Rijn, by the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the Wallerfonds (L. 2760), 1949

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1949-561

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds

The artist

Biography

Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - Venice 1659)

He was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, on 19 April 1633.²S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Willem Drost, een ongrijpbaar Rembrandt-leerling’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 79 (1992), no. 1, pp. 15-21. Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.³A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, vol. III (1721), p. 61. Before he entered Rembrandt’s workshop, probably at the end of the 1640s, he may have studied under Rembrandt’s pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) in the mid-1640s. After Drost left Amsterdam for Italy, where he is documented in Venice from 1655, he abandoned his Rembrandtesque manner and adopted the powerful chiaroscuro style of the Venetian tenebrists. He may have worked only briefly in Rome, but was mostly active in Venice, where he trained Johann Carl Loth (1632–1698), among others, and he is now known to have died there from pneumonia in 1659, at the age of only 25.⁴J. Bikker, ‘Drost’s End and Loth’s Beginnings in Venice’, The Burlington Magazine 144 (2002), no. 1188, p. 147. The rediscovery of his burial record in Venice on 25 February 1659 means that many painted works with later dates traditionally ascribed to him have recently been removed from his oeuvre. On the basis of his choice of subject and style, the majority of his drawings seem to have originated during his apprenticeship in Amsterdam under Rembrandt.

Entry

Drawings assigned to Drost with certainty rarely have any sense of depth or depict figures seen from behind, like this drawing. On the other hand, the rendering of the bodies and faces and the extensive parallel hatching could support an attribution to him, as was first proposed by Schatborn in 1985. A drawing in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. R14),⁵J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 67 (as provisionally attributed to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout). Compare the composition and the way in which the trees and the grove or cloud are drawn in the background. may be by the same hand.

Between 1756 and 1763 the German miniaturist and printmaker Johann Daniel Laurenz (1729-c. 1810) made a series of etchings after what he thought were original drawings by Rembrandt, including the present sheet.⁶Recueil de différents sujets d’études d’après les dessins de Rembrandt; R. Weigel, Die Werke der Maler in ihren Handzeichnungen : beschreibendes Verzeichnis der in Kupfer gestochenen lithographirten und photographirten Facsimiles von Originalzeichnungen grosser Meister, Leipzig 1865, no. 7618. Presumably, these drawings belonged to the renowned collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), a military leader in the service of the emperor Charles IV.⁷K.H. von Heinecken, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, Leipzig 1768, p. 60. After his death, the collection of the Prince of Savoy was purchased by the Emperor, who placed it in the custody of the Kaiserliche Hofbibliotheek in Vienna. Laurenz probably copied the museum’s drawing there.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000

Literature

I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Mostra di incisioni e disegni di Rembrandt, exh. cat. Rome (Museo di Palazzo Venezia)/Florence (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi) 1951, no. 81 (as Rembrandt); J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandt’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 1 (1953), nos. 3/4, p. 56, fig. 6 (as Rembrandt); E. Haverkamp-Begemann, ‘Review of J. Bolten, Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot: Groninger Museum voor Stad en Lande, Utrecht 1967’, Master Drawings 8 (1970), no. 4, p. 414 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1158 (as Rembrandt); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 103, fig. 21; W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, p. 142, under no. 45, n. 3; D.A. de Witt, L. van Sloten and J. van der Veen, Rembrandt’s Late Pupils: Studying under a Genius, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2015, p. 126, no. 91 (as Willem Drost?); H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 81, under no. 38

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Group of Figures at a Table in the Garden of a Tavern, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.36095

(accessed 1 June 2025 09:16:18).

Footnotes

¹Note RMA.
²S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Willem Drost, een ongrijpbaar Rembrandt-leerling’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 79 (1992), no. 1, pp. 15-21.
³A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, vol. III (1721), p. 61.
⁴J. Bikker, ‘Drost’s End and Loth’s Beginnings in Venice’, The Burlington Magazine 144 (2002), no. 1188, p. 147.
⁵J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 67 (as provisionally attributed to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout). Compare the composition and the way in which the trees and the grove or cloud are drawn in the background.
⁶Recueil de différents sujets d’études d’après les dessins de Rembrandt; R. Weigel, Die Werke der Maler in ihren Handzeichnungen : beschreibendes Verzeichnis der in Kupfer gestochenen lithographirten und photographirten Facsimiles von Originalzeichnungen grosser Meister, Leipzig 1865, no. 7618.
⁷K.H. von Heinecken, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, Leipzig 1768, p. 60.