Jacob Blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, the Sons of Joseph

Watermark: None visible through lining

Light foxing throughout; laid down

...; unidentified collection (L. 1842); ...; collection Richard Cosway (1742-1821), London (L. 629); his sale, London (Stanley), 14 (16) February 1822 sqq., no. 505, as Rembrandt (‘A pen and ink drawing, Blessing Joseph’s Children’), with one other drawing; ...; collection Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), London (L. 2445); ? from whom purchased, through the mediation of the dealer S. Woodburn, by William Esdaile (1758-1837), London (L. 2617), 1835;¹¹According to L. 2445; and an inscription on the drawing. his sale, London (Christie’s), 17 June 1840, no. 52, as Rembrandt (‘Jacob blessing the children of Joseph, who is addressing his father’), £ 0.5.0, to the dealer Walter Benjamin Tiffin (1795-1877), London;²²According to an inscription on the drawing; copy RKD. ...; sale, Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913, London) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 November 1882 sqq., no. 170, as Rembrandt, fl. 14, to Jozef Linnig (1815-91), Antwerp;³³Copy RKD. ...; donated by Dr Daniel Schweisguth (1865-1943), Beaumont-sur-Oise, to the museum (L. 2228), 1905

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1905-263

Credit line: Gift of D. Schweisgutt, Beaumont-sur-Oise

This scene shows Joseph, seated in bed, with his son Joseph and his grandchildren Manasseh and Ephraim (Genesis 48:13-20). With a gesture of his left hand, Joseph confronts his father, who, according to the Bible, laid his hand in blessing not on the head of the oldest son, Manasseh, but on the head of the youngest, Ephraim. We can see in the expression on Joseph’s face that he disapproved of his father’s choice. Jacob says that Manasseh shall become a tribe but that Ephraim’s tribe shall surpass him and that his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.

There are two examples of this same composition in the Rijksprentenkabinet; for the other, which was trimmed at the upper corners, but shows the figures full length, see inv. no. RP-T-1891-A-2422. Two additional versions of it are known: one formerly in the collection of Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam,⁴⁴Benesch, no. 130 (c. 1636); sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby Mak van Waay), 17 November 1975 sqq., no. 190, to Richartz. and the other one formerly in the collection of Luigi Grassi in Florence (1924),⁵⁵According to W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), p. 470, under no. 120; sale, London (Sotheby’s), 13 May 1924, no. 110, repr. possibly the version later in a private collection in England.⁶⁶According to a letter from the owner, 22 January 1987; note RMA. Since both Amsterdam drawings and the presumed ex-Grassi sketch were executed only with a pen, we can conclude that the grey wash on the drawing from the Houthakker collection was added later. The existence of several examples of exactly the same depiction makes it clear that drawings in Rembrandt’s studio were often copied as training exercises by his pupils and followers.

The style of the drawings resembles Rembrandt’s draughtsmanship of the mid-to-late 1630s, when Jan Victors was his apprentice (c. 1637-39 or possibly as early as 1635).⁷⁷For drawings by Victors, see Sumowski, Drawings, X (1992), nos. 2324*-2347*; H. Bevers, ‘Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an “Oeuvre” of a Rembrandt Pupil’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, pp. 371-88; H. Bevers, with a contribution by G.J. Dietz and A. Penz, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, coll. cat. Berlin 2018, pp. 202-9. Victors seems to have adapted the composition in two of his paintings, one now in the Muzeum Lazienki Królewskie w Warszawie, Warsaw (formerly in the Muzeum Narodowe, inv. no. M.Ob.37 MNW), and the other in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (inv. no. 1344).⁸⁸Sumowski, Gemälde, IV (1989), nos. 1751 and 1744. Given this connection, Victors’ name has been associated in the past with both drawings. Sumowski assumed that inv. no. RP-T-1891-A-2422 was an original by Victors,⁹⁹W. Sumowski, ‘Bemerkungen zu Otto Benesch, “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” I’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 6 (1956-57), p. 261. while Benesch considered the present sheet to be a copy by Victors after Rembrandt.¹⁰¹⁰Benesch, no. 130A. Most authors, however, regard the drawing formerly in the Houthakker collection as the original, but this, too, has been doubted.¹¹¹¹By Frerichs in L.C.J. Frerichs, J. Verbeek and C.W. Mönnich, Bijbelse inspiratie: Tekeningen en prenten van Lucas van Leyden en Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1964-65, under no. 63.

Which version might have been the original prototype is difficult to establish, especially since we do not know the present whereabouts of the ex-Grassi and ex-Houthakker drawings. It seems certain that inv. no. RP-T-1891-A-2422 is a copy, given its black chalk underdrawing, and the version in an English private collection in 1987 – of even lesser quality – seems to be a copy after it. This leaves us with the present sheet and the ex-Houthakker drawing, which is compromised by the addition of later wash. Both have awkward passages, for instance, in the relationship of the two men’s hands, where what looks like a cuff on Jacob’s right wrist is apparently the fingers of Joseph’s right hand. It is also unclear how Jacob is supported. Is he in bed? Is he standing? Is he seated on a high-backed chair? Where is the lower half of his body? On balance, the Amsterdam sheet is the most likely prototype. In any case, the confused details in this drawn composition seem to have been resolved in different ways in both painted versions.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

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. 94 (as copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1636); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 130A (as copy by Jan Victors after a drawing by Rembrandt); 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. 75 (as a copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1635), with earlier literature; R. Verdi, Rembrandt’s Themes: Life into Art, New Haven/London 2014, pp. 226-27

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'attributed to Jan Victors, Jacob Blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, the Sons of Joseph, Amsterdam, c. 1635 - 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.28595