Rembrandt's late pupils

Nicolaes Maes

Willem Drost

Constantijn van Renesse

place and year of birth

Dordrecht 1634

Amsterdam 1633

Maarssen 1626

family background

son of a merchant

son of a bookbinder, bookseller and schoolteacher

son of a preacher

period of instruction

drawing lessons from an “ordinary master”

possibly first under Samuel van Hoogstraten

studied letters and mathematics at Leiden; possibly in contact with Samuel van Hoogstraten

period of instruction under Rembrandt

c.1648-1651

c. 1648-1653

c. 1649-1652

place and year of death

Amsterdam 1693

Venice 1659

Eindhoven 1680

Johannes Raven

Jan van Glabbeeck

Pieter de With

place and year of birth

Amsterdam 1633/4

unknown (between 1625 and 1635?)

unknown

family background

son of a ship’s carpenter

unknown

unknown

period of instruction

unknown

unknown

active between c. 1650c. 1660

period of instruction under Rembrandt

in contact c. 1659/60; possibly a pupil c. 1652

<1653>

early 1650s

place and year of death

Amsterdam 1662

Puerto Santa Maria, Spain 1686/87

unknown

Jacobus Leveck

Abraham van Dijck

Titus van Rijn

Heyman Dullaert

Dordrecht 1634

Dordrecht c.1635/6

Amsterdam 1641

Rotterdam 1636

son of a merchant

son of a merchant

son of Rembrandt van Rijn and Saskia Uylenburgh

son of a grain merchant

in Dordrecht

possibly first under Samuel van Hoogstraten

under Rembrandt

drawing lessons from an unknown master

c.1650/1-c.1653/4

c. 1651-c.1653/4

c. 1651-c. 1658

c. 1652-c. 1655

Dordrecht 1675

Dordrecht 1680

Leiden 1668, buried in Amsterdam

Rotterdam 1684

Jacobus van Dorsten

Johannes Leupenius

Arent de Gelder

Godfrey Kneller

Dordrecht 1645

Amsterdam 1643

Dordrecht 1645

LĂźbeck 1646

son of a silk merchant

son of a preacher

son of a bookkeeper in the West India Company

son of an architect and surveyor of public works in LĂźbeck

possibly under Samuel van Hoogstraten

trained as a surveyor

under Samuel van Hoogstraten

studied mathematics at Leiden; after Rembrandt transferred to Ferdinand Bol

c. 1659

c. 1660?

c. 1661-1663

1662

Amsterdam 1678

Amsterdam 1693

Dordrecht 1727

London 1723

69

2.28 Anonymous Rembrandt pupil, Study of a Man, c.

1660, panel, 25.1 x 19 cm, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917

2.29 Anonymous Rembrandt pupil, Study of a Man, c.

1660, panel, 23.7 x 17.8 cm, Amsterdam, Jan Six Fine Art

70

3.5 Rembrandt, Girl in a Window, 1651, canvas, 78 x 64 cm, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum

3.6 Rembrandt, Girl at a Window, 1645, canvas, 81.6 x 66 cm, London, Dulwich Picture Gallery

The time Drost spent with Rembrandt is reflected most clearly in the large number of surviving drawings. The sketches he made in preparation for the Noli me tangere show that he preferred a technique combining loosely penned outlines with hatching (fig. 3.3). He followed Rembrandt’s abbreviations of features, particularly of the angular nose, but his use of hatching is quite different.7 He combined swathes of lines running in different directions, whereas Rembrandt made limited use of hatching in more regular patterns.

Here Drost tended towards a more dynamic effect—an effect he also sought in his painted compositions.

The drawings reveal how much attention was devoted to composition in Rembrandt’s workshop. The study in Copenhagen for the Noli me tangere, in which Drost borrowed much of Rembrandt’s painting, while at the same time turning the composition around, was undoubtedly the first in a series. In the next drawing he tried the figures out on a larger scale.8 Before he transferred his design on to canvas he drew it more meticulously and in greater detail, particularly Christ’s face. The end result shows striking changes in the poses of the two figures. This later stage in the development of a composition can be linked to an ambitious drawing that he must have made as preparation for

78

that pupils like Maes, Drost, Van Dijck and Leveck strove for with their pitch-black shadows in the early sixteen-fifties. The raking light from the side, consistently employed by Drost and Van Dijck, is particularly striking. A later painting like De Gelder’s Artist’s Studio (fig. 3.49) would seem to indicate that he tried out methods to manipulate daylight, chiefly to soften it Van Hoogstraten makes no mention of such artistic devices in his discussion of the observation of light, which suggests that they were developed after his period of training with Rembrandt in the sixteen-forties.76 During his training in the sixteen-sixties De Gelder would have

3.48 Arent de Gelder, Judah and Tamar, 1681, canvas, 102.5 x 147.5 cm, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader

seen translucent curtains in the workshop, hung in front of the window on ropes so that the light could be balanced. A study of a nude model in a studio by Rembrandt makes it likely that a method like this was used (fig.

1.25).77 De Gelder appears to have installed an even more complicated system in his own studio, with a curtain hanging some distance from the window. It was probably not actively used for his Artist’s Studio because the artist is shown there while he is painting a history

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same title in The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam Authors: David de Witt, Leonore van Sloten, Jaap van der Veen Design: Bart van den Tooren © 2015 Terra Publishers The Rembrandt House Museum Terra is part of Jodenbreestraat 4 TerraLannoo bv 1011 NK Amsterdam Box 97 www.rembrandthuis.nl 3990 DB Houten, The Netherlands info@terralannoo.nl www.terralannoo.nl First printing, 2015 ISBN 978 90 8989 647 6 NUR 640, 654

All rights reserved. Nothing in this publication may be reproduced, stored in an automated database, or published in any manner or from, be it electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording, or in any other way, without prior written permission from the publisher.

The publisher has attempted to contact all copyright owners of photographic reproductions. Those who nonetheless seek to claim these rights, may contact the publisher.

The exhibition was made possible through the financial support of: Mondriaan Fonds, VSB Fonds, Fonds 21, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Stichting ‘De Gijselaar-Hintzenfonds’, K.F. Hein Fonds, Stichting Zabawas, Gravin van Bylandt Stichting and Aon

Illustrations in the preface illustration on p. 2: detail of 3.25 illustration on p. 4: detail of 2.32 illustration on p. 5: detail of 1.25 illustration on p. 6: detail of 3.29 illustration on p. 8: detail of 1.11 illustration on p. 9: detail of 3.8

Photo credits Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts: 2.9 Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum: 2.5 Amsterdam, Six Collection: 3.27, 3.43 Amsterdam, Willem Russell Collection: 3.30 Amsterdam, Jan Six Fine Art (photographer: Margareta Svensson): 2.29 Amsterdam, The Rembrandt House Museum: p. 4, p. 10, 1.1 (photographer: Kees Hageman), 1.10, 2.12, 2.15, 2.27, 2.30, 2.32, 3.13, 3.21, 3.26, 3.32, 3.39 Amsterdam, private collection (photographer: René Gerritsen): 3.4 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum: p. 6, p. 14, p. 22, p. 23, 1.3, 1.4, 1.8, 1.16, 1.21, 2.4, 2.17, 2.19, 2.31, 3.7, 3.9, 3.11, 3.22, 3.29, 3.37, 3.45, 3.53, 3.54 Basel, Kunstmuseum: 3.10 Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie: 3.14, 3.15 Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett: p. 14, p. 23, 1.7, 2.20, 2.22 Boston, George and Maida Abrams Collection: 2.3 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts: 2.1 Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum: 3.2 Bremen, Kunsthalle: 1.14, 3.42 Brussels, Museum of the City of Brussels – The King’s House: 3.46 Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago: 2.25, 2.26 Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst: p. 2, 3.25 Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling: 3.3 Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister: 1.15 Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstich-Kabinett: 2.21 Groningen, Groninger Museum: 3.28, 3.44 Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen, Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister: 2.8 Kingston, Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre: 3.20, 3.48 Leiden, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden: 3.35 Lincolnshire, Illinois, Collection of Anne Moore (photographer: René Gerritsen): 3.55 London, British Museum: p. 14, p. 22, 1.6 London, Dulwich Picture Gallery (Bridgeman Images): 3.6 London, Kenwood House (Bridgeman Images): 3.23 London, private collection: 3.47 London, The National Gallery: 2.18, 3.12, 3.24 (Bridgeman Images) London, Wallace Collection: p. 9, 3.8 Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum: 1.17 Maastricht, Menno Balm: 1.2 Mettingen, Draiflessen Collection (Liberna): 1.13 (photographer: Henning Rogge, Hamburg), 3.50 (photographer: Stephan Kube, Greven), 3.52 (photographer: Henning Rogge, Hamburg) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Alfred and Isabel Bader: 3.33, 3.40, 3.49 The Netherlands, private collection: 3.38 New York, Clement C. Moore Collection: 1.24 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 2.10 New York, The Morgan Library: 2.13 New York, Otto Naumann Fine Art, Ltd.: 3.1 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum: p. 5, 1.25, 3.41 Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection: 1.9, 1.20, 2.14 Paris, Musée du Louvre: 2.6, 3.16 (Bridgeman Images), 3.17 (Bridgeman Images) Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art: 2.28 Polesden Lacey, Surrey, National Trust: p. 8, 1.11 Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (photographer: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam): p. 14, p. 22, 1.5, 1.12, 1.22, 1.23, 2.11 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum (Bridgeman Images): 3.5 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek: 3.51 The Hague, Mauritshuis: 2.2, 3.36 (photographer: René Gerritsen) The Hague, Museum Bredius: 3.19 Tuliba Collection (photographer: Stephan Kube, Greven): 1.19, 3.31 United Kingdom, Mrs. A. Taubman: p. 23, 1.18 United States of America, private collection: 2.7 Vienna, Albertina: 2.23 Weimar, Goethe-Nationalmuseum: 2.16