Watermark: None

Light 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.

…; purchased from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, as Rembrandt, with one other drawing, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, after 1900;²²Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-46

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

This small drawing brings together three unrelated sketches: a boy’s head in profile to the right, a sleeping girl and, if we turn the paper ninety degrees to the left, a boy with a hat seen in profil perdu in the lower right corner of the sheet.

The rendering of detail in the girl’s face is so weak – particularly evident if we turn the sheet ninety degrees to the left – that it is impossible to see Rembrandt’s hand here. There are several analogies to two drawings in Paris previously attributed to Rembrandt, one in the Louvre (inv. no. RF 4683),³³Benesch, no. 284; M. de Bazelaire and E. Starcky, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 1988-89, no. 17. the other in the Dutuit collection (inv. no. unknown),⁴⁴F. Lugt, Les dessins des écoles du Nord de la collection Dutuit au Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (Petit Palais), coll. cat. Paris 1927, no. 59; Benesch, no. 283. both of which have a number of similar unusual stylistic characteristics, such as the very fine lines for the shadows. Both the Paris drawings depict a woman who has been identified as Saskia; it is possible that the museum’s sketch was inspired by these drawings.

The lines for the boy’s head at the top of the sheet have also been hesitantly drawn, probably by the same artist who sketched the girl’s head, but with ink of a different color (now greyer in shade). A comparison has been made with the drawing of a Sleeping Boy (inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4520(V)) on the verso of a double sided sheet, of which only the recto is considered to be autograph and the verso a copy. The present drawing used to be part of a larger sheet, which was cut into smaller sections by a dealer or collector, truncating the more open and summary sketch at the bottom edge of the sheet. Other sketches may have been added to the resulting fragments by a later imitator to make them more attractive. We cannot exclude the possibility that these drawings were made by a pupil in order to supply dealers with ‘Rembrandtesque’ drawings.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1292 (as Rembrandt, 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. 20 (as Rembrandt, c. 1638); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A 2 (as a pupil of Rembrandt from his Leiden years); 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. 98, with earlier literature

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'follower of Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of a Sleeping Girl and a Boy’s Head in Profile, Amsterdam, after c. 1640', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118051