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拍品專文
The acquaintance between the artist and the sitter Jan Uytenbogaert (1608-1680), chief tax collector in Amsterdam, may have begun in Leyden, where the artist was working and living at the time and Uytenbogaert was studying Law. They may have also met a few years later in Amsterdam, as both shared an interest in prints and print collecting. In 1639, Rembrandt bought his house on Sint Anthoniesbreestraat but soon defaulted on his repayments and was helped by the tax collector, who interceded for him. It cannot be a coincidence that the present etching was made that same year, possibly as a token of gratitude for Uytenbogaert's intervention. The artist depicts him in his office engaged in his daily duties, weighing and recording bags of money handed to him by a kneeling servant. It is almost a genre scene and the sitter is dressed in 16th century costume, including a luxurious fur coat with rich, velvety fur, rendered with drypoint.
The rare first state of the print is unfinished, before the completion of the sitter’s face, as we can see here in the even rarer counterproof of that state. It is as such a fascinating document of Rembrandt's workshop process and approach to printmaking and portraiture.
Counterproofs are created by placing a freshly printed impression, with the ink still wet, onto another sheet and putting it through the press once more. The image is thereby transferred to the second sheet, but in reverse. Through the double-transfer – from plate to print to counterproof – the image of the counterproof is in the same direction as on the plate. The reversal method allowed the artist to test some changes he might want to make to the plate in a subsequent state by drawing onto the counterproof. The present impression is in all likelihood precisely that: a trial counterproof with some additions in black chalk to the face, hair and barrel. Examples of counterproofs of different subjects are also known with additional work in pen and ink. Counterproofs of this kind served as intermediate working proofs, to further develop and improve the composition of the respective plate.
Counterproofs without such interventions and of later states (see lot 130) were presumably printed for a different purpose: as a finished print in their own right, produced to satisfy a specialised collector’s market hungry for such variants and oddities.
The first unfinished state of the present print is recorded in 15 impressions only, including two counterproofs, both retouched with black chalk on the sitter’s face: one in the British Museum, London (inv. no. F,6.54); and one at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Obj. no. 1946.112.7730), with the face nearly completed in black chalk.
The present example is a third, hitherto undescribed example of a worked-up counterproof of the first state, which only recently resurfaced.
The rare first state of the print is unfinished, before the completion of the sitter’s face, as we can see here in the even rarer counterproof of that state. It is as such a fascinating document of Rembrandt's workshop process and approach to printmaking and portraiture.
Counterproofs are created by placing a freshly printed impression, with the ink still wet, onto another sheet and putting it through the press once more. The image is thereby transferred to the second sheet, but in reverse. Through the double-transfer – from plate to print to counterproof – the image of the counterproof is in the same direction as on the plate. The reversal method allowed the artist to test some changes he might want to make to the plate in a subsequent state by drawing onto the counterproof. The present impression is in all likelihood precisely that: a trial counterproof with some additions in black chalk to the face, hair and barrel. Examples of counterproofs of different subjects are also known with additional work in pen and ink. Counterproofs of this kind served as intermediate working proofs, to further develop and improve the composition of the respective plate.
Counterproofs without such interventions and of later states (see lot 130) were presumably printed for a different purpose: as a finished print in their own right, produced to satisfy a specialised collector’s market hungry for such variants and oddities.
The first unfinished state of the present print is recorded in 15 impressions only, including two counterproofs, both retouched with black chalk on the sitter’s face: one in the British Museum, London (inv. no. F,6.54); and one at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Obj. no. 1946.112.7730), with the face nearly completed in black chalk.
The present example is a third, hitherto undescribed example of a worked-up counterproof of the first state, which only recently resurfaced.