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Lot Essay
On November 16, 1968, Frits Lugt wrote to the collector Jadot in Brussels congratulating him on a drawing by Rembrandt that he owned (a copy of the letter is accessible through the records of the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History). Lugt was the first to recognize Rembrandt’s hand in the present sheet. The attribution was subsequently confirmed by K.G. Boon, who dated the drawing to 1645-50, by Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann and other scholars since then.
Around 1640 Rembrandt began a habit of going for walks in and around Amsterdam sketching the landscapes and buildings he saw around him. He continued to make landscape drawings from life for about twelve years until 1652. His drawings of this kind are made either in black chalk or pen and ink. Rembrandt sketched quickly to capture his surroundings, but sometimes he was fascinated by a particular structure or view and paused to make multiple studies of it from different angles.
Rembrandt recorded various types of cottages and farmsteads, canals and city walls, roads and dykes. He portrayed the landscapes around him so carefully that the drawings he made on his walks offer a detailed visual record of the Amsterdam region in his time. The features depicted are so precisely rendered that specialists in Rembrandt’s topography have been able to retrace the artist’s itineraries in the city and outside (B. Bakker, M. van Berge-Gerbaud, E. Schmitz, Landscapes of Rembrandt. His favourite walks, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Gemeentearchief, and Paris, Institut néerlandais, 1998).
The dilapidated cottage with a thatched roof depicted in this drawing recalls a similar structure in a sheet in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (inv. 8914). The two buildings are both very primitive cottages, simply constructed, surrounded by bushes and flanked by a dovecote standing on a tall pole. It has been suggested that they could be the same building (Gnann, op. cit., p. 260). The location of the cottage on the sheet in Paris has been precisely identified as an area on the Amsteldijk, a few miles south of Amsterdam. Despite its simple appearance, the small cottage in ruins, almost overtaken by weather and nature, becomes the protagonist at the center of Rembrandt’s drawing.
Like many other Rembrandt landscape drawings in pen and brown ink this sheet has been enhanced with gray wash. Generally, scholars consider these touches of gray wash later additions.
Around 1640 Rembrandt began a habit of going for walks in and around Amsterdam sketching the landscapes and buildings he saw around him. He continued to make landscape drawings from life for about twelve years until 1652. His drawings of this kind are made either in black chalk or pen and ink. Rembrandt sketched quickly to capture his surroundings, but sometimes he was fascinated by a particular structure or view and paused to make multiple studies of it from different angles.
Rembrandt recorded various types of cottages and farmsteads, canals and city walls, roads and dykes. He portrayed the landscapes around him so carefully that the drawings he made on his walks offer a detailed visual record of the Amsterdam region in his time. The features depicted are so precisely rendered that specialists in Rembrandt’s topography have been able to retrace the artist’s itineraries in the city and outside (B. Bakker, M. van Berge-Gerbaud, E. Schmitz, Landscapes of Rembrandt. His favourite walks, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Gemeentearchief, and Paris, Institut néerlandais, 1998).
The dilapidated cottage with a thatched roof depicted in this drawing recalls a similar structure in a sheet in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (inv. 8914). The two buildings are both very primitive cottages, simply constructed, surrounded by bushes and flanked by a dovecote standing on a tall pole. It has been suggested that they could be the same building (Gnann, op. cit., p. 260). The location of the cottage on the sheet in Paris has been precisely identified as an area on the Amsteldijk, a few miles south of Amsterdam. Despite its simple appearance, the small cottage in ruins, almost overtaken by weather and nature, becomes the protagonist at the center of Rembrandt’s drawing.
Like many other Rembrandt landscape drawings in pen and brown ink this sheet has been enhanced with gray wash. Generally, scholars consider these touches of gray wash later additions.