House with a Figure Standing in a Doorway

Watermark: None

Light foxing throughout

...; collection Paul Mathey (1844-1929), Paris;¹¹Note RMA. ...; purchased from the dealer P. Roblin, Paris, as Rembrandt, with six other drawings, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1901;²²Hofstede 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-1930-65

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

A number of buildings are situated in a yard, with at centre a figure leaning on the lower half of a Dutch stable door. The scene is drawn in black chalk, with many fine and broad lines, as well as light and dark multi-directional hatching. In terms of perspective, the architecture of the building is rather odd. For this reason, it was long generally thought that the windows and the trees to the left of the main house were drawn later.³³Benesch, no. 467. But even though these chalk lines differ in tone and character, they were sketched with the same kind of chalk used for the rest of the drawing. The entire scene was probably drawn by the same hand.

Not only is the architecture curious, but the way in which the scene is lit is also unusual. Only the house with the door is in deep shadow, and the multi-directional hatching does little to clarify the forms (e.g. the shape of the roof is not precisely rendered). The weak composition and odd use of light make an attribution to Rembrandt impossible. Although Benesch endorsed the attribution to Rembrandt, it had already been doubted in the earlier literature.⁴⁴G. Wimmer, Rembrandts Landschaftszeichnungen, Frankfurt-am-Main 1935 and M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942. The only question is whether the drawing was made by a school pupil or by a later imitator. The structure of the paper indicates a possible date in the late seventeenth century.⁵⁵The chain lines are rather widely separated and the paper is fairly thick.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1311 (as Rembrandt); G. Wimmer, Rembrandts Landschaftszeichnungen, Frankfurt-am-Main 1935, pp. 61 and 69; 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. 110; O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 467 (as Rembrandt, c. 1636); 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. 112

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'follower of Rembrandt van Rijn, House with a Figure Standing in a Doorway, Amsterdam, c. 1675 - c. 1700', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28634