View of the Utrechtse Poort in Amersfoort, Seen from the Town

Watermark: None visible through lining

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...; ? sale, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-98, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Ph. van der Schley et al.), 3 March 1800 sqq., Album II, no. 4, as Rembrandt (‘Het Jan-Roodenpoorts Poortje, gestoffeerd met beeldjes; frapant van licht, met de pen en roet’), fl. 20, to the dealer J. Yver, Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RKD. …; sale, Jacob de Vos (1735-1833), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 30 October 1833 sqq., Album H, no. 10, as Rembrandt (‘De oude Jan - Rodenpoorts - Toren te Amsterdam. Zonachtig; als voren [Meesterlijk met de rietpen en bruine ink.]’), fl. 70, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;²²Vosmaer 1868, p. 523; copy RKD. ...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam, by 1868;³³ Vosmaer 1868, p. 523. his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 382, as Rembrandt, fl. 620, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁴⁴According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom, fl. 697.50, to the museum (L. 2228), 1890

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1890-A-2411

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The previously unidentified view was recognized in 1982 by Burchard G.J. Elias.⁵⁵RKD, image 233167; L.M. Schoemaker, ‘Rembrandt in Rhenen’, in: L. Bultje-van Dillen et al. (eds.), Geschiedenis van Rhenen, Utrecht 2008, p. 241. There are two known examples of this scene of the early fifteenth-century gate in Amersfoort, which formed part of the city’s second fortified wall and which was demolished in 1835. The museum’s drawing is a bit narrower but taller than the example that was auctioned in London in 1964.⁶⁶Sale, London (Sotheby's), 1 December 1964, in no. 10; 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. The Hague 1985, fig. 111a. Both drawings were probably copied after a lost work by Rembrandt. The Westpoort in Rhenen in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O*54), is a comparable original drawing, which, in its composition and lighting, is clearly distinguishable from the copies.⁷⁷Benesch, no. 826; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem and elsewhere 1997, no. 329. The museum’s drawing has been partly washed in grey by a later hand; according to the description in the auction catalogue, the other example is heightened with opaque white.

The style of the three drawings is the same, but presumably when Rembrandt made the lost original version of the drawing of the Utrechtse Poort in Amersfoort, the light was brighter than when he sketched the Westpoort. Taking this difference in account, the structure of the Westpoort is more strongly rendered and the relationship between the light and dark areas is more balanced. This is the difference between forms that have been acutely observed and those that have been imitated in line and tone. The present drawing presumably does reproduce the pattern of lines in the original – although there are differences between the two copies – but the feeling of an original work created step by step is missing. The lines in the copies are more independent of one another and the areas of shadow have not been integrated into the totality of the scene.

Rembrandt may have drawn the original version of the museum’s drawing on a trip to eastern Holland. Opinions differ as to the dating of the various drawings he made during this journey.⁸⁸F. Lugt, Mit Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Berlin 1920, dates the drawings 1650-60; Van Regteren Altena dates the trip to 1644, in: 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. 77. According to Benesch, Rembrandt probably made more than one trip to the east, one in 1647-48 and one in 1652-53. It is more likely that Rembrandt’s first trip took place in 1649, the year in which Hendrickje Stoffels is mentioned as a witness of a baptism in Bredevoort on the eastern border of Holland.⁹⁹H. Ruessink, ‘Hendrickje Stoffels, jongedochter van Bredevoort’, De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 41 (1989), no. 1, p. 22; J.R. Voûte, ‘Rembrandts reis naar Rhenen en Arnhem’, De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 24 (1970), no. 1, p. 40. Benesch, who accepted the museum’s drawing as autograph, placed the sheet in a group of landscape sketches and views of old towns that Rembrandt made during his first trip.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1511; 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. 77 (as Rembrandt, c. 1649-50); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 828 (as Rembrandt, c. 1647-48); 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. 111, with earlier literature; C.P. Schneider et al., Rembrandt’s Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1990, p. 188, n. 3; L.M. Schoemaker, ‘Rembrandt in Rhenen’, in L. Bultje-van Dillen et al. (eds.), Geschiedenis van Rhenen, Utrecht 2008, p. 244, repr.

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'anonymous, View of the Utrechtse Poort in Amersfoort, Seen from the Town, in or after c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28633