A young hurdy-gurdy player in profile

The subject of this drawing – a wandering musician – was one popular with Rembrandt and his school (see K. Jones Hellerstedt, ‘A Traditional Motif in Rembrandt’s Etchings: The Hurdy-Gurdy Player’, Oud Holland, XCV (1981), pp. 16-30, pl. 4). The instrument is depicted in greater detail in a painting in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (inv. GE-5603), sometimes attributed to Arent de Gelder (see I. Sokolova in Rembrandt et son école. Collections du musée de l’Ermitage de Saint-Pétersbourg, exhib. cat., Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2003-2004, no. 38, ill.). The relationship between the drawing and the painting is so close that the former must be a study for the latter, but the attribution of the painting remains as elusive as that of the present work; a date in the early 1650s has been suggested (W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, IV, Landau, 1983, no. 1943, ill., as anonymous). The painting could have been inspired by a chalk study by Rembrandt (in which, however, the musician is an older man playing a rommelpot), dated around 1646, most recently sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 611 (O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London, 1973, IV, no. 745, fig. 941; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt. The complete drawings and etchings, Cologne, 2019, no. D414, ill.). There is a sketch of a tree on the verso of the sheet, drawn by another hand.