Beggar Man and Beggar Woman conversing

In the small etchings offered in the current and adjacent lot, Rembrandt’s acute sense of observation is focused on two couples of vagabonds, the first one standing in conversation and the second on the move outside of the city. Literary sources may reveal something about the social attitudes towards people at the edge of society in Rembrandt's time, but it is not clear what the attraction of or the demand for such little sketches was. There is very little context or local colour, so the artist's and the viewer's interest must have been in the figures alone. They are dressed in rags and their advanced age or possibly just the hardships of many years spent on the street are suggested by their walking sticks, hunched backs and wizened features. It speaks for Rembrandt's humanity and character that there seems no moral judgment or ridicule in the way he depicts these beggars and tramps. Itinerant and homeless people must have been a common sight in Holland at this time of great political unrest and social upheaval, as thousands of migrants, often religious refugees, came from the Southern Netherlands and other parts of Europe and tried to settle in Amsterdam, a city then growing at an astonishing rate.