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
108
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