Watermark: None

Foxing throughout¹¹Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.

…; sale, Albert Langen (1869-1909, Munich), Munich (A. Riegner and H. Helbing), 5 June 1899, no. 150, as Rembrandt, to the dealer H. Pallmann for Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague;²²Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), as Rembrandt, 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-14

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

Traditionally, this drawing was considered to be a depiction of the Shunammite woman kneeling before the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 4: 8-36). After her son’s death, the Shunammite woman implored Elisha to come to her house, where Elisha brought the boy back to life. There are two moments in the story during which the mother kneels before the prophet. The first, and by far the most dominant in the pictorial tradition, is when she throws herself at his feet soon after learning of her son’s death, while Elisha’s servant Gehazi tries to hold her back (2 Kings 4:27). The second is when she bows down at the prophet’s feet in gratitude after the boy’s resurrection (2 Kings 4:37). In renditions of the first scene, the servant Gehazi is often depicted, as is the prophet’s staff, which was instrumental in bringing the boy back to life.³³See, for instance, the composition by Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), which survives only in an anonymous copy, last seen at auction at Neumeister, Munich, 3 November 2009, no. 424, in which Elisha’s staff lies on the ground and Gehazi tries to pull the woman away from the prophet. Both those elements are missing in this drawing, and the woman is not bowing down to the ground, either. The traditional identification is thus untenable and the absence of attributes makes it difficult to identify any specific story that Bol may have had in mind.⁴⁴The suggestion made by J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, 6 vols., Dordrecht 2015, vol. III (1989), p. 549, under no. C 85, that the figures are based on the Shunammite woman bowing down at Elisha’s feet in the background of the fourth print in a print series about Elisha by Hans Collaert (c. 1525/30-1580) after Maarten de Vos (1532-1603), is not convincing. The figure group, in fact, comes a little closer to the same figures in the left background of the first print, but even if Bol were aware of the print series, it seems unlikely that he intended to depict those two characters in the present drawing. See A. Diels, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: The Collaert Dynasty, 8 vols., Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2005-06, nos. 59-64. Print 1 is no. 59; 4 is no. 62.

The drawing was attributed to Rembrandt and to an anonymous Rembrandt student for some time, until Werner Sumowski placed it in the oeuvre of Ferdinand Bol in 1979. He dated it to circa 1636, the early phase of Bol’s activity in Rembrandt’s workshop, but Bol likely executed it around 1640, towards the end of his stay. Stylistic comparisons can be made with Bol’s Hagar and the Angel from circa 1640 (inv. no. RP-T-1930-27), especially in the energetic hands and the combination of thick contours and delicate pen lines for details, and the Swooning Woman Supported by Two Figures from circa 1640 (inv. no. RP-T-1930-26), particularly in the boldness of the draftsmanship and the dense horizontal squiggles delineating the shaded passages in the woman’s sleeve.

As Benesch first noticed, the same kneeling woman is found in the figure of Manoah’s wife in Bol’s drawing The Angel Appearing to Manoah and his Wife in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, which is dated to the 1640s (inv. no. 1484).⁵⁵W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, vol. I (1979), no. 136x; T. Gerszi, 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts: A Complete Catalogue, coll. cat. Budapest 2005, no. 24. The RKD recently catalogued the drawing as The Virgin and Peter at the Tomb of Christ. Whereas Benesch thought that the present drawing is a repetition of the Budapest work, Sumowski rightly suggested that it is the other way around. Indeed, the woman’s body in the Amsterdam drawing has more volume, especially in her right shoulder and hips. The lines in the Rijksmuseum figure are also more searching, and there are pentimenti in the woman’s left hand and the right contours of her dress. In the Budapest drawing, Bol better defined some passages that posed a problem to him in the Amsterdam work, such as the woman’s feet and her left hand.

Interestingly, the figure group of the angel, Manoah and his wife in the Budapest work goes back to a drawing by Govert Flinck of the same subject in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (inv. no. R8 (PK)), which he created under Rembrandt’s tutelage in circa 1633-35.⁶⁶J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 5 (as Rembrandt). For the recent attribution to Flinck, see P. Schatborn, ‘The Early, Rembrandtesque Drawings of Govert Flinck’, Master Drawings 48 (2010), no. 1, pp. 17-19, fig. 18. In Flinck’s drawing, Manoah’s wife is the one standing next to her kneeling husband, rather than the one kneeling. Bol’s drawing in the Rijksmuseum thus appears to have had a direct function in the process of turning Flinck’s composition into his own, focusing specifically on the kneeling woman. It should be regarded as an exercise rather than the depiction of a specific scene, one that he could revisit and reuse in other, more elaborate compositions. Bol’s Swooning Woman Supported by two Figures in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1930-26) functioned in much the same way.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Ilona van Tuinen, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1259 (as Rembrandt); W. von Seidlitz, ‘Die Sammlung der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen von Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot im Haag’, Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, N.S. 28 (1917), p. 252 (no opinion); J. Kruse and C. Neumann (eds.), Die Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seiner Schule im National-Museum zu Stockholm, coll. cat. Stockholm 1920, p. 79 (as School of Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: des Meisters Handzeichnungen (Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben, vols. 31-32), 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, vol. I (1925), no. 190 (as Rembrandt); J.C. Van Dyke, The Rembrandt Drawings and Etchings, New York/London 1927, p. 130, fig. 148, pl. 37 (as unknown pupil); O. Benesch, Rembrandt: Werk und Forschung, Vienna 1935, p. 15 (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. 10, p. 46, under no. 93 (as Rembrandt), with additional earlier literature; W. Sumowski, Bemerkungen zu Otto Beneschs “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” II, Bad Pyrmont 1961, p. 7 (as School of Rembrandt, perhaps Horst); T. Gerszi, ‘Etudes sur les dessins des élèves de Rembrandt’, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 36 (1971), p. 105 (as copy of Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), vol. II, no. C11 (as copy of unknown original by Rembrandt); T. Gerszi, Zwei Jahrhunderte niederländischer Zeichenkunst. Ausgewählte Meisterwerke des 16.-17. Jahrhunderts Museum der Bildende Künste, Budapest, Budapest 1976, p. 35, under no. 49 (as copy of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, vol. I (1979), no. 159x, with additional earlier literature, p. 296, under no. 136x; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 94, n. 10; J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, 6 vols., Dordrecht 2015, vol. III (1989), p. 549, under no. C 85; T. Gerszi, Dessins hollandais et flamands. Chef-d’oeuvres du dessin du Musée des Beaux-Arts, Budapest, Budapest 1989, p. 33, under no. 49

B. van Sighem, 2000/I. van Tuinen, 2018, 'Ferdinand Bol, Woman Kneeling before a Man, Amsterdam, c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200117931