Object data
pen and brown ink; framing lines in brown ink over black chalk
height 108 mm × width 144 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
The Pancake Woman
Amsterdam, c. 1635
Inscriptions
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inscribed on verso: lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in brown ink, Rembrandt et Compie; lower centre, in pencil (with the no. of the 1883 De Vos sale), de Vos 425; above that (with the sheet turned upside down), in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), deGr. 1198
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stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None visible through lining
Condition
Laid down; paper damage, upper right
Provenance
...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 425, as school of Rembrandt (‘Dessins divers. Lot de sept pièces. A la plume et lavés de bistre.’), with six other drawings, fl. 180, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;1 from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1891
Object number: RP-T-1891-A-2424
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
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
The drawing is, as Seymour Slive remarked, a ‘superb example of the artist’s genius for capturing the momentary drama of a modest street scene with a few strokes of the pen’. An old woman is seated on a low chair, frying pancakes in a large pan. The boy at the centre – bending his leg to dig deep into his pocket in search of a coin to buy a pancake – is especially well described. To his right is a toddler, evidently with a full mouth, already enjoying his pancake, and in the background are two wrestling boys. Rembrandt has succinctly characterized the figures in a free and sketchy style: the old woman’s preoccupation with her work, the obvious contentment on the small child’s face, and the movement of the fighting boys. As usual, Rembrandt’s drawing style combines sketchiness with precision.
In 1635, Rembrandt made an etching of this subject (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-212),2 but, though the drawing is datable on stylistic grounds to the mid-1630s, its format and composition differ and it cannot really be considered a preliminary study for the etching. It could, however, have been made before the print, the memory of the scene that was recorded in the sketch providing the inspiration for a further exploration of the theme in an etching. Another drawing, in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. RF 4670),3 is sometimes considered to be a study for the boy and the dog in the foreground of the etching, but the group is not reversed and I suspect that the drawing was made after the etching by someone other than Rembrandt.
Whereas in the present drawing, the pancake woman is shown obliquely, in Rembrandt’s etching of the subject, she is portrayed from the side, as was the conventional approach of other artists treating the subject since the sixteenth century.4 Rembrandt owned a painting by Adriaen Brouwer entitled A Pancake Baker,5 possibly similar or identical to the painting in the Philadelphia Art Museum (inv. no. 680, as follower of Adriaen Brouwer). In the opinion of Joshua Bruyn, the present drawing might be a very free variation of Brouwer’s composition, drawn by Rembrandt from memory and very freely adapted by him in his etching.6
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1198 (c. 1635); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 760 (c. 1635); 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. 16 (1635); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 409 (1635); 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. 6, with earlier literature; C. White, Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work, New Haven/London 1999 (orig. edn. 1969), p. 176, fig. 238; E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt, the Printmaker, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/London (British Museum) 2000-01, pp. 152-53, under no. 28, fig. c; J. Lloyd Williams et al., Rembrandt’s Women, exh. cat. Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001, p. 128, under no. 47, fig. 109; E. Hinterding et al., Rembrandt: Dipinti, incisioni e riflessi sul ‘600 e ‘700 italiano, exh. cat. Rome (Azienda Speciale Palaexpo/Scuderie del Quirinale) 2002-03, pp. 126-27, under no. 28, fig. b; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 54 and 58, fig. 52; S. Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, p. 93, fig. 8.1; RRP, V (2011), p. 41, fig. 42; P. Schatborn, E. Starcky and P. Curie (eds.), Rembrandt intime, exh. cat. Paris (Musée Jacquemart-André) 2016-17, no. 31; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, p. 260, under no. 136.
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, The Pancake Woman, Amsterdam, c. 1635', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28125
(accessed 26 April 2024 16:32:46).