Rembrandt van Rijn

Inn on the Amstelveensweg

Amsterdam, c. 1652

Inscriptions

  • inscribed: lower left, with the mark of Robinson, in brown ink, JCR (L. 1433)

  • inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, 17; next to that (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), deGr 1206; lower left, coll. Th. Dimsdale; lower centre (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), 1206; above that (with the no. of the 1895 Pitcairn Knowles sale), 529; lower right, in pencil, H 78

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Dimsdale (L. 2426); next to that, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643); lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Arms of Württemberg, close to Heawood, no. 485 (1625); Schatborn 1985a, p. 237, repr.

Condition

Laid down; light foxing throughout

Provenance

...; collection Thomas Dimsdale (1758-1823), London (L. 2426); from whose heirs purchased, en bloc, by the dealer Samuel Woodburn (1786-1853), London;1According to L. 2426. ...; collection Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), London (L. 1433); his sale et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller & Co.), 20 November 1882 sqq., no. 165 (‘Paysage Hollandais. [...] H. 140. L. 200. Collection Th. Dimsdale et J.C. Robinson.’), fl. 44;2Copy RKD. ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller & Co.), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 529 (‘Paysage. [...] Collections Th. Dimsdale et J. C. Robinson. Plume avec un peu de lavis. - H. 14, l. 20 cent.’), fl. 100, to Hendrik Jacobus Valk (1863-1940), Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;3Copy RKD; note RMA. from whom, fl. 115, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1901-A-4523

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

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

On a path along a river we see a boat with lowered sails moored before an inn or tavern, recognizable by its signboard. There is a small landing stage in the river and a house on the other side.

The drawing was executed in dark, almost black ink, in which light and shade were indicated with a great deal of evenly-spaced hatching drawn in various directions and tonalities. The rhythm of the lines has been partially lost because a later owner of the drawing added a kind of cloudy sky in brown and also attempted to deepen the shadows by applying passages of grey wash. This disturbed the balance between light and dark, which is so subtly achieved in this kind of pen drawing, especially when on paper toned light brown by Rembrandt himself. Other drawings by Rembrandt have also been ‘improved’ by later hands in a similar way, a not uncommon phenomenon in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when such works were proudly described by collectors and auctioneers as verbeteerd (improved) or opgewerkt (reworked) (see inv. nos. RP-T-1930-63, RP-T-1898-A-3689 and RP-T-1930-20).

It is not easy to determine exactly where Rembrandt sketched the tavern. There were various such establishments along the Amstelweg and elsewhere. Two landscapes by Rembrandt in which a similar tavern appears – one formerly in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth (inv. no. 1036*) and now in the Maida and George Abrams Collection in Newton (MA),4Benesch, no. 1314; M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings, coll. cat. 5 vols., Turin/London/Venice 2002, no. 1485. and the other in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1283)5Benesch, no. 1242; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), no. 69. – were drawn in the same style and technique, and they probably date from the same period. Boudewijn Bakker suggested that the London and Amsterdam sheets depict the same bend in the road on the Amstelveensweg, showing the same inn, with its tall chimney, depicted from the opposite direction (in the case of the Rijksmuseum drawing looking back towards the city).6B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, p. 322. The subtle treatment of line in this group of drawings in some respects resembles etchings Rembrandt made in the early 1650s (e.g. inv. nos. RP-P-OB-453 and RP-P-OB-454).7B. 221 and 222; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, nos. 273 and 272. The last dated landscape etchings are from 1652, and they show the same rhythm of short lines and evenly-spaced parallel hatching.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1206; 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, no. 78 (1650-52); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1221 (c. 1650); 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. The Hague 1985, no. 33, with earlier literature; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 170, under no. 80; B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, pp. 117 and 322-23, fig. 3; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 68-69, fig. 62

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Inn on the Amstelveensweg, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28551

(accessed 30 April 2025 11:41:31).

Footnotes

  • 1According to L. 2426.
  • 2Copy RKD.
  • 3Copy RKD; note RMA.
  • 4Benesch, no. 1314; M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings, coll. cat. 5 vols., Turin/London/Venice 2002, no. 1485.
  • 5Benesch, no. 1242; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), no. 69.
  • 6B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, p. 322.
  • 7B. 221 and 222; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, nos. 273 and 272.