Object data
pen and brown ink; framing line in brown ink
height 233 mm × width 178 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Three Women and a Child by a Door
Amsterdam, c. 1645
Inscriptions
-
inscribed on verso: upper right, in pencil (with the no. of the 1883 De Vos sale), deVos 424; lower left, in blue pencil, 30; lower centre, in pencil, H.17; lower right, in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), 1194
-
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); next to that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: Strasbourg lily within a shield, surmounted by a crown, above the letters, PR
Condition
Light foxing throughout
Provenance
...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam;1 his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 424, with fifteen other drawings, as school of Rembrandt, fl. 480, to J.H. Balfoort (active 1853-83), Utrecht, for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135);2 from whom, fl. 5,049, with 166 other drawings, to the museum (L. 2228), 1889
Object number: RP-T-1889-A-2056
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
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
An old woman is seated on a low chair near the entrance of a house, her hand resting on a bench by the door. Another woman sits on the ground in front of her, sewing, and in front of this figure we see a child, also seated on the ground. A woman stands behind the lower part of a stable door and looks out. The scene seems to have been drawn from life, but we do not know who the figures are or where the drawing was made. On another occasion, on a sheet in a private collection in Paris,3 Rembrandt again sketched women near a door, but he was standing inside and the door was different.
Rembrandt had a strong preference for scenes set in doorways, whether they were biblical or genre scenes. This configuration gave him the opportunity to suggest more than one single moment from a story. The doorway often functions as a clear division between past and future events, especially when a scene of arrival or departure is portrayed. In the present drawing of the women by a door, everything is calm. Although in the auction of the collection of Jacob de Vos in 1883 it was included in a lot of drawings described as ‘school of Rembrandt’, the style is very characteristic of Rembrandt. The old woman is portrayed with the most detail, including the deep crease of her jowl, and she has been partially shaded with hatching. The other figures are more schematic, and the child in the foreground has been suggested using only a few loose pen strokes. Rembrandt placed the old woman at the centre of the composition and further emphasized her by rendering her in greater detail than the other figures. The few lines indicating the door frame are evocative in their simplicity: they create a sense of space and a balanced context for the composition. The drawing style indicates a dating in the mid-1640s.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1194; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 779 (c. 1636); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 17 (c. 1635); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 407 (c. 1635); 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. 27, with earlier literature; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, p. 19, fig. 11; J. Lloyd Williams et al., Rembrandt’s Women, exh. cat. Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001, no. 101; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 62-63, fig. 56; R. Verdi, Rembrandt’s Themes: Life into Art, New Haven/London 2014, p. 161, fig. 143
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Three Women and a Child by a Door, Amsterdam, c. 1645', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28545
(accessed 17 May 2024 10:06:59).