The Swijgh Utrecht Tower in Amsterdam

Inscriptions

inscribed, in a seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink: upper right, doele t Amsterdam; lower right, Rembrant
inscribed on verso: upper left, in pencil, H. Meyer; lower left, in blue pencil, 80; next to that, in pencil, illegible; lower centre, in black chalk, 30-29 1/9; below that, in pencil, H 117; next to that, in pencil, illegible
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); next to that, with the mark of Hofstede de Groot (L. 561)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Heavy foxing throughout¹Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.

Provenance

...; sale, Pieter Oets (1720-90, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Yver et al.), 31 January 1791 sqq., Album G, no. 51 (‘Gezigt van den Doelen te Amsterdam, fiks met de Pen, door Rembrant’), with two other drawings; ...; sale, Jonkheer Alfred Montaldo Boreel (1849-1912, The Hague) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 (17) June 1908 sqq., no. 488, fl. 50, unsold;²Copy RKD; note RMA. from whom, fl. 200, to Frits Lugt on behalf of the dealer F. Muller;³Note RMA. donated by Antonius Wilhelmus Mari Mensing (1866-1936), Amsterdam, to Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague (L. 561), 1910;⁴Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. his sale, Leipzig (C.G. Boerner), 4 November 1931, no. 182, DM 8,400, to the dealer P. Cassirer, Berlin and Amsterdam;⁵Copy RKD. ...; collection Dr Hans Wilhelm Christian Tietje (1885-?), Amsterdam, 1932;⁶Amsterdam 1932, p. 92, no. 304. ...; collection Franz Wilhelm Koenigs (1881-1941), Haarlem, by 1956;⁷According to Rotterdam/Amsterdam 1956, pp. 144-45, no. 193. his daughter, Adelheid Karoline Martha Boerlage née Koenigs (1922-2004), Laren;⁸Note RMA. from whom purchased by the museum (L. 2228), with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Prins Bernardfonds, 1969

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1969-222

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)

After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.

Entry

The image is dominated by a representation of the large, round Swijgh Utrecht Tower,⁹The name of the tower, which means ‘Utrecht be silent’, was formerly to be found on a stone of about 1550, which was set into the structure. It referred to an attack on Naarden by people from Het Sticht (province of Utrecht), which was repulsed with the help of the Amsterdam militia; K.G. Boon, Rembrandt’s Etchings, Amsterdam 1969, no. 3. which was part of the original fortified wall around Amsterdam. This tower was probably built in 1481-82.¹⁰The tower was demolished in 1882 to make way for the current Doelen Hotel on the Nieuwe Doelenstraat. In Rembrandt’s time, it formed part of the complex of the Kloveniersdoelen, the guild hall or headquarters of the Arquebusiers’ civic guard, where Rembrandt’s Night Watch (inv. no. SK-C-5) hung from 1642. The side wall and prominent chimney of the modern wing of the guild hall complex (completed in 1627), located at the corner of the Kloveniersburgwal and the Nieuwe Doelenstraat, can be seen on the left. At the far right is a house among trees on the Kloveniersburgwal, as well as a wooden bridge over the original Singel, one of the canals around Amsterdam.

The drawing, which is unfortunately in poor condition, was executed entirely with the pen, with shaded areas rendered with long parallel hatching. Only the window openings and the shadows under the trees feature stronger accents. Rembrandt left out the pointed roof on the tower, which is clearly visible at the upper left of a drawing made from a viewpoint further to the right by his pupil Johannes Leupenius, now in the Atlas Splitgerber in the Stadsarchief of Amsterdam (inv. no. 010001000158).¹¹Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), no. 1565x. The motif’s omission in Rembrandt’s drawing was probably not so much because it would not fit on the paper (after all, there is a large gap above the crenellated top of the squat round tower),¹²F. Lugt, Mit Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Berlin 1920, p. 30. but because he wanted to depict the tower as far as possible in its original form. In another drawing of an old Amsterdam monument, his study of the early sixteenth-century Montelbaan Tower, in the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam,¹³Benesch, no. 1309; B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, p. 158, fig. 2. he omitted Hendrick de Keyser’s pointed wooden spire of 1606. By leaving out modern additions to these medieval structures, Rembrandt could use them as ‘historical’ buildings to deck out his biblical and historical scenes. For example, a large, round tower appears in the following works: a drawing of The Prophet Jonah before the Walls of Niniveh, in the Albertina in Vienna (inv. no. 8808);¹⁴Benesch, no. 950; K.A. Schröder and M. Bisanz-Prakken (eds.), Rembrandt, exh. cat. Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina) 2004, no. 116. a drawing of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg (inv. no. 22413),¹⁵Benesch, no. 899; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, coll. cat. 3 vols., Cologne and elsewhere 2011, no. 852. where it is part of the fortified wall around the town; and in the etching of the same subject (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-142).¹⁶B. 75; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 269. The towers he invented for his biblical scenes may not have been consciously derived from buildings he had drawn from life, such as the Swijgh Utrecht Tower, but there are certainly clear parallels.

In the drawing by Leupenius (who was some forty years younger than Rembrandt), the trees on the embankment are much taller than in Rembrandt’s drawing, and if the artists really followed reality in this respect, Leupenius’ drawing must have been made much later (c. 1660). However, Rembrandt’s drawing is probably not such a precise record of reality. For the sake of the composition, he might have exercised a bit of artistic license and made the trees at the edge of the drawing lower than they actually were. The Swijgh Utrecht Tower dates from the first half of the 1650s.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

Literature

O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1334 (c. 1654-55); 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, no. 34, with earlier literature; B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, pp. 106 and 177-80, fig. 2; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, p. 67, fig. 60; G. Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, p. 170, fig. 294, and pp. 263-64, fig. 436; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘The Night Watch and the Entry of Marie de’Medici: A New Interpretation of the Original Place and Significance of the Painting’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 57 (2009), no. 1, p. 22 from pp. 4-41, fig. 19; S. Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, pp. 156-57, fig. 12.12

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, The Swijgh Utrecht Tower in Amsterdam, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28552

(accessed 9 May 2025 21:55:05).

Footnotes

¹Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.
²Copy RKD; note RMA.
³Note RMA.
⁴Hofstede de Groot notes, KB.
⁵Copy RKD.
⁶Amsterdam 1932, p. 92, no. 304.
⁷According to Rotterdam/Amsterdam 1956, pp. 144-45, no. 193.
⁸Note RMA.
⁹The name of the tower, which means ‘Utrecht be silent’, was formerly to be found on a stone of about 1550, which was set into the structure. It referred to an attack on Naarden by people from Het Sticht (province of Utrecht), which was repulsed with the help of the Amsterdam militia; K.G. Boon, Rembrandt’s Etchings, Amsterdam 1969, no. 3.
¹⁰The tower was demolished in 1882 to make way for the current Doelen Hotel on the Nieuwe Doelenstraat.
¹¹Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), no. 1565x.
¹²F. Lugt, Mit Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Berlin 1920, p. 30.
¹³Benesch, no. 1309; B. Bakker et al., Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998-99, p. 158, fig. 2.
¹⁴Benesch, no. 950; K.A. Schröder and M. Bisanz-Prakken (eds.), Rembrandt, exh. cat. Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina) 2004, no. 116.
¹⁵Benesch, no. 899; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, coll. cat. 3 vols., Cologne and elsewhere 2011, no. 852.
¹⁶B. 75; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 269.