watermark: none

…; sale, Anna Johanna Suzanna van Kinschot-Luden (1824-97, Amsterdam) et al., Amsterdam, (F. Muller), 31 January 1899 sqq., no. 777, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 41, to the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RMA. from whom, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 47.15, to the museum (L. 2228), 1899

Object number: RP-T-1899-A-4239

In the present sheet, a man – apparently a soldier, judging by what seems to be his armoured cuirass – is playing knucklebones or jacks (‘koten’). In that game of ancient origin, knuckels (astralagi) from the ankle of pigs, sheep or cows were either thrown into a ring in the attempt to kick out those of the other players or thrown and caught with the back of the hand in a series of prescribed throws. It is not fully clear which version of the game the figure here is playing. His gaze, shaded from the sun by a wide-brimmed hat, is focused on a stone plinth obviously used as playing field. In the left hand, he is apparently holding a knuckle ready to be thrown, while the item in his right hand appears to be the bowl of his white clay pipe. In an alternative detail, rendered with thin chalk lines, his left arm is stretched out as in a throw. That gesture was discarded, with the final solution marked by more decisive chalk strokes and accented with white chalk.

Spirited and vigorously done, the drawing must have been done from life, as is also betrayed by pentimenti in the position of the right foot. A similar figure, likewise wearing a cuirass, appears in Weenix’s Italian Harbour Scene (1649) in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (inv. no. NK 2728), on loan from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Rijswijk/Amersfoort.²²Cf. P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144 (fig. 2); A.A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018, I, no. 54. That painting served as basis for the present drawing’s attribution, first suggested in 1973 by Peter Schatborn and recently accepted by Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven.³³Kindly communicated by email, 19 February 2017.

Weenix apparently drew his figure studies while in Italy, assembling a stock for his painted staffage.⁴⁴P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 69. Unfortunately, little remains of this presumed repertory of figures drawings. Of the studies on blue paper mentioned as being after the same model,⁵⁵P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144. only those in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (inv. no. 56.1 as ‘Gerard ter Borch II’) and the Frits Lugt collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 4883),⁶⁶P. Schatborn and K.G. Boon, Dutch Genre Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: A Loan Exhibition from Dutch Museums, Foundations and Private Collections, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) 1972-73, no. 108. seem to be by the same hand.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

P. Schatborn, Hollandse genre-tekeningen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1973, p. 38, under no. 108 (as by Weenix); P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 69, no. 99; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 14-15, fig. 7; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, p. 141 (n. 5)

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Jan Baptist Weenix, Study of a Man Playing Knucklebones, Rome, c. 1642 - c. 1647', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145592