Saskia in Bed / verso: Boy Sleeping (by a follower of Rembrandt)

Watermark: None

...; collection Jan van Rijmsdyck (c. 1730-88/90), London (L. 2167); ...; ? collection William Esdaile (1758-1837), London;¹¹According to the catalogue for the sale, Edward Cheney (1803-84, London), London (Sotheby's), 29 April (4 May) 1885 sqq., no. 865. ? his sale and Edward Cheney (1803-84, London), London (Sotheby's), 29 April (4 May) 1885 sqq., no. 865 (‘A child asleep; from the Esdaile collection’), £14, to the dealer Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (c. 1840-92), London;²²Copy RKD. ...; sale, Ritter Alfred von Franck (1808-84, Graz), Frankfurt-am-Main (F.A.C. Prestel), 4 December 1889 sqq., no. 187 (‘Schlafendes Kind. [...] Meisterhaft mit der Feder skizzirt und leicht getuscht. Auf der Rückseite die höchst flüchtige mit Roth-tein gezeichnete Skizze einer im Bett ruhenden Figur’), 131 DM;³³Copy RKD. ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller & Co.), 25 (26) June 1895 sqq., no. 525, fl. 180, to the dealer C.F. Roos, Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁴⁴Copy RMA; note RMA. from whom, fl. 207, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1901-A-4520(R)

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The faint red chalk sketch of Saskia sitting in bed with folded hands used to be considered as the verso of the more fully rendered pen-and-wash drawing of a Boy Sleeping (fig. a, inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4520(V)), but now the roles have been reversed.

In what is now the recto, only the first stage has been drawn in with red chalk in a more or less uniform tone. Other drawings, after having been started in this fashion, were often further developed with darker lines, and small changes and improvements were introduced. An example of this is an elaborated red chalk drawing of Saskia Sitting up in Bed, Holding a Child from the collection of Count Antoine Seilern, now in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.183).⁵⁵Benesch, no. 280a. Rembrandt drew his wife in bed several times,⁶⁶Most of the drawings can be found in O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), vol. 2. and he twice depicted her in an etching together with other motifs (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-773).⁷⁷B. 369; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 177. He probably portrayed her at the very end of one of her four pregnancies, since in one drawing a nursing couch can already be seen in her bedroom (inv. no. RP-T-1930-53).

The present sketch probably dates from the same period as the drawing of Saskia in red chalk in London. Based on the finely curved lines, we can confidently assign both drawings to 1635 or later. The child in the London drawing could thus be Rumbartus (for his dates, see inv. no. RP-T-1930-53), who has also been identified in a pen drawing of Four Heads of Saskia with a Child in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. R 83 recto (PK)),⁸⁸Benesch, no. 360 recto; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, no. 10; A.J. Elen, Rembrandt in Rotterdam: Drawings of Rembrandt and his Circle in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, exh. cat. Rotterdam 2005-06, no. 7. which would date between December 1635 and January 1636. The clothes worn by Saskia in the red chalk drawings are not always the same, which indicates some difference in time.

The portrayal of a sleeping boy on the Amsterdam verso seems charming at first glance, but closer examination reveals a rather stiff and careful handling of the lines, which does not really suit the composition. The relationship between the shapes and the way in which they are handled is not sufficiently spontaneous; Rembrandt’s stylistic trademarks are a bit too independent of the forms. The relationship of the facial parts to one another is not exact enough to speak of Rembrandt’s usual accuracy in depicting facial shapes and expressions. The dense shading on the right and the carefully applied brush washes are also uncharacteristic. Compared with uncontested drawings in the same style, Boy Sleeping could possibly be a copy. The question remains as to who was depicted here. The unknown original could not have represented one of Rembrandt’s own children, but possibly one of the many children of Hendrick Uylenburgh, Saskia’s uncle, and Maria van Eyck, in whose house Rembrandt lived until 1635.⁹⁹H.F. Wijnman, Uit de kring van Rembrandt en Vondel: Verzamelde studies over hun leven en omgeving, Amsterdam 1959, pp. 11-12, n. 5; P. Schatborn and E. Ornstein-van Slooten, Rembrandt as Teacher, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1984-85, p. 8.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1190; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 686 (c. 1636); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, nos. 22-23 (c. 1638); Benesch 1973, no. 379 (c. 1638); 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. 12, with earlier literature; C. Dittrich and T. Ketelsen et al., Rembrandt: Die Dresdener Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett) 2004, pp. 184 and 214, under no. 103; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 40, 42 and 209 under no. 7 and no. 80; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 379 (c. 1635)

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Saskia in Bed / verso: Boy Sleeping (by a follower of Rembrandt), 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.28132