Watermark: Basel crozier within a shield, surmounted by a crown, with the letters FH, close to Tschudin, no. 266 (1637)

…; sale, William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94, Rotterdam and Wiesbaden), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 534**, as Rembrandt, fl. 105, to the dealer H.J. Valk for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹¹According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1895; from whom, fl. 120.75, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

Object number: RP-T-1901-A-4530

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

One of the miracles that Christ performed was the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus, the president of the synagogue (Luke 8:40-56). According to the biblical text, Christ took her by the hand and she stood up, but in the drawing Christ raises his hand over her, as in the scene of the Raising of Lazarus. As the girl begins to sit up, at lower left a kneeling old man, probably her father, Jairus, lifts his arms in amazement. In the upper right-hand corner is a standing nude, which has nothing to do with the scene. It was probably drawn from a print showing the proportions of the human body (e.g. a page from the book by Albrecht Dürer [1471-1528], Hierinn sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, Nuremberg 1528, p. 186, a Dutch edition of which was published in Arnhem in 1622).

The drawing style is light and sketchy, and the forms have been broadly indicated. Widely spaced hatching was used for the shaded areas. The style is based on Rembrandt’s drawings from the early to mid-1630s. There are two drawings of the same subject in a similar sketchy style that were previously attributed to Rembrandt, now both generally given to Govert Flinck (1616-1660) and dated circa 1638-40, one formerly in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. R 23 (PK)),²²Benesch, no. 61; P. Schatborn, ‘The Early, Rembrandtesque Drawings of Govert Flinck’, Master Drawings 48 (2010), no. 1, fig. 21. and the other in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY (inv. no. 2007.2.1).³³Benesch, no. 62. The present drawing is, however, executed with a broader, thicker pen and the drawing style is looser and less refined, especially in the representation of the figures. According to Bevers, this draughtsmanship is characteristic for another pupil in Rembrandt’s studio in the mid-1630s: Jan Victors.⁴⁴H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an “Oeuvre” of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, p. 382. The same stylistic features are found in the Rembrandtesque drawing of Haman Begging Esther for Mercy on the recto of a double-sided sheet in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (inv. no. 09/730),⁵⁵H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an “Oeuvre” of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), fig. 1. one of the most secure drawing by Victors, since it is connected with a painting. Similar in both works are the loose contours formed by long, curved strokes and widely spaced multi-directional hatching. In another drawing attributed to Victors, in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. NMH 2011/1863),⁶⁶H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an “Oeuvre” of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, fig. 30; Magnusson, Dutch Drawings in Swedish Public Collections, coll. cat. Stockholm 2018, no. 460. we find the same abbreviated facial types constructed from ovals and with straight lines to indicate eyebrows.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1169 (as Rembrandt?, c. 1630-32); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 417 (as Rembrandt?, early); 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. 99 (as Rembrandt pupil or copy, c. 1637); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A1 (as Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, ‘Bemerkungen zu Otto Benesch, “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” I’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 6 (1956-57), no. 4, p. 261 (as Jan Victors?); 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. 84 (as anonymous Rembrandt pupil), with earlier literature; E. Starcky, ‘Essai sur le gout pour les dessins de Rembrandt en France au XVIIIe siècle’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Rembrandt and his Pupils: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum Stockholm 2-3 October 1992, Stockholm 1993, pp. 202-03, fig. 8 (as school of Rembrandt); H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an “Oeuvre” of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, p. 382, fig. 29; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, pp. 204, 208-09 under no. 106.

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'attributed to Jan Victors, Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - c. 1638', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118035