Watermark: None

A strip of paper approximately 20 mm wide has been added to the left side; upper right corner repaired; several small light brown stains; light foxing

…; 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. 424, as Rembrandt, with fifteen other drawings, fl. 480 for all, to the dealer J.H. Balfoort for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹¹According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom, as Rembrandt, fl. 5,049, with 166 other drawings, to the museum (L. 2228), 1889

Object number: RP-T-1889-A-2053

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

After having been considered to be by Rembrandt by scholars for over seventy-five years, this drawing was catalogued as an early example by Drost by Schatborn in 1985.⁵⁵P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 101. The regular parallel hatching, the sketchy, interrupted contour lines and the awkward passages, such as the hands and feet of Tobias, make an attribution to Rembrandt unlikely. These characteristics can, however, be found in drawings by Drost of the early 1650s. A comparable drawing is The Angel Departing from the Family of Tobit of circa 1652 in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York (inv. no. I, 197),⁶⁶J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, no. 62; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 33.2. which the artist based on an etching by Rembrandt of 1641 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-83). Both drawings are executed with a relatively fine, occasionally scratchy pen line, whereas some areas have been drawn with broader strokes of a reed pen. Drost also smudged the ink with a finger or brush before it was dry, in the case of the present drawing to create shadow under the wing of the Archangel Raphael. Rembrandt used exactly the same trick to shade the inside of the angel’s wing in his drawing of Manoah’s Offering of circa 1652 in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 5803).⁷⁷P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, no. 18.

The tip of the archangel’s staff, the rippling water in the foreground (representing the Tigris) and the framing lines are later additions in a lighter shade of brown ink. The ink scribbles under the stick probably depict the tail of the large fish, which must have been cut off when the sheet was trimmed. The angel points to the fish, the gall of which will cure the blindness of Tobias’ father (Tobit 6:2).

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1165 (as Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 229 (as Rembrandt, c. 1640); Bijbelse kunst in het Rijksmuseum, exh. cat. Amsterdam 1939, no. 68f (as Rembrandt); 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. 56, with additional earlier literature (as Rembrandt); 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. 82 (as Rembrandt); Bibeln eller den Heliga Skrift med bilder av Rembrandt, Stockholm 1954, fig. 102 (as Rembrandt); S. Vestdijk, Rembrandt en de engelen: Twaalf gedichten en een acrostichon, The Hague 1956, pp. 3, repr., and 68 (as Rembrandt); W. Wegner, Rembrandt-Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung) 1957, no. 18 (as Rembrandt); H.M. Rotermund, Das Buch Tobias erzählt und ausgelegt durch Zeichnungen und Radierungen Rembrandts, Stuttgart 1961, p. 10, repr. on cover (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, Rembrandt: Werk und Forschung (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), Lucerne 1970 (orig. edn. Vienna 1935), p. 40 (as Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 573 (as Rembrandt); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 101; 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. 124, no. 50

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'attributed to Willem Drost, Tobias and the Angel with the Fish, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200125078