November 2024
Friday, November 1
Trois Crayons (French, "three crayons") The technique of drawing with black, white and red chalks (à trois crayons) on a paper of middle tone, for example mid-blue or buff. It was particularly popular in early and mid-18th century France with artists such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. (Clarke, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms)
Coming Up
Greetings, dear readers, from Trois Crayons HQ. For this month’s edition of the newsletter, we have picked out current events from across the UK and around the world, interviewed Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, on the opening day of ‘Drawing the Italian Renaissance’ at the King’s Gallery, London, and Elania Pieragostini, Senior Curator of the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, provides our ‘Drawing of the Month’ in anticipation of ‘Dürer to Van Dyck | Drawings from Chatsworth House’ which opens on November 7 at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. J. Cabelle Ahn reviews ‘Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin’ at The Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the customary selection of literary and audio highlights is followed, as ever, by the ‘Real or Fake’ section.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
NEWS
In art world news, in America, a Monet pastel has been identified by the FBI and returned to the family of its original owners eight decades after its theft by the Nazis. In Williamstown, the Clark Institute has received a gift of over $45 million from the Aso O. Tavitian Foundation to endow a new curatorial position, care for the collection and build a new wing. The gift includes 331 works of art from Mr. Tavitian’s personal collection, including thirty-nine drawings. In New York, Master Drawings New York has announced its forthcoming exhibition dates, February 1–8, 2025, with a preview on January 31. Christie’s ‘Old Master & British Drawings’ New York sale will be held that same week, on February 4, and the Sotheby’s counterpart, ‘Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries’, on February 5. In Paris, at the auctioneers L’Huillier & Associés, a well-preserved study on blue paper of a nude man by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon made €190,000 on the auction block. Later this month the art fair FAB Paris will run from November 22–27 at its new venue: the Grand Palais, and London Art Week will host its digital winter edition from November 29 – December 6. In Venice, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia has received a donation of 216 Italian drawings from ambassador Paolo Galli. The collection is now on display at the Ca' Rezzonico until January 20.
Beyond the walls of the Grand Palais a number of dealer-led pop-ups and exhibitions will also take place across Paris. Galerie Eric Coatalem will host ‘Greuze, l’Enfance et la Famille’ from November 6 – December 20, featuring 55 rarely displayed drawings, pastels and oils from European and American private collections. It is accompanied by a 170-page catalogue written by Emmanuelle Brugerolles and Antoine Chatelain. Galerie Alexis Bordes will present a recently discovered work by Edouard Manet in an exhibition, ‘At the sources of Impressionism: Edouard Manet and his contemporaries’, which runs from October 24 – November 8, and Poncelin de Raucourt Fine Arts is collaborating with the contemporary artist Benoît Dutour at a pop-up gallery, 15 Rue de Marignan, from November 21–27. In London, at Daniel Katz Gallery from November 15-22, Xenia Artistic Retreat is presenting an exhibition, ‘Imaginery Lines’, which explores the work of contemporary artists in dialogue with Old Master drawings from the collection of Xenia’s founder and patron, Bianca Roden.
Gerrit van Honthorst (?), The Deluge, Staatliches Museum Schwerin
In lecture and event news, the Art Institute of Chicago will host a lecture from Margaret Morgan Grasselli, ‘Neoclassical Drawings—What’s Old Is New Again’, on November 2, following the opening Revolution to Restoration: French Drawings from the Horvitz Collection. Registration is free with museum admission. Blue paper is in focus again this month with Dr. Alexa McCarthy giving a talk entitled ‘Blue Paper: Function in the Creation of Form’, at the Courtauld Institute’s Vernon Square Campus on November 7, following the recent opening of the Courtauld Gallery’s ‘Drawn to Blue: Artists’ use of blue paper’. On November 12–13, a two-day online symposium, co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the University of Amsterdam, will take place, entitled ‘Drawn to Blue: A Digital Symposium’. Also, on November 12 CODART is hosting an ‘online attribution session’ featuring little-studied drawings from the Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Registration is available to members. In London, at the Paul Mellon Centre and the Warburg Institute, a conference entitled ‘“What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?”: The Window as Protagonist in British Architecture and Visual Culture’ will take place from November 21–22, in-person or online.
In literary news, the V&A has published the first in a new sketchbook series, entitled ‘The Artist’s Sketchbook: Inside the Creative Mind’, authored by Senior Curator, Jenny Gaschke. Adam Eaker, Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has recently published the first major biographical account of Gesina ter Borch, one of the best-documented female artists of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. For young writers, entries for the 7th Annual Ricciardi Prize should be submitted on or before November 15. For all writers, entries for the Bella Maniera Publishing Support Award should be submitted by November 29. A call for proposals for a conference entitled ‘Mettere mano. Reworking Early Modern Drawings’ has been issued. The conference will take place at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute on March 4–7, 2025. Proposals are due by November 10. In Göttingen, a two-day conference on the life, legacy, and career of the influential 20th-century art historian Wolfgang Stechow will take place from November 21–22. The conference will also be broadcast via Zoom.
In acquisition news, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, has acquired a pastel by Mela Muter from Agnews Brussels. The Audain Art Museum, Whistler, has acquired a historical watercolour by Emily Carr from c. 1908. The work joins another depiction of the same scene dated to 1912. The Château de Versailles, Versailles, has acquired a pastel portrait of the infant Louis XV by Rosalba Carriera. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, has acquired a 16th century Spanish embroidery design from Christopher Bishop Fine Art, and the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, has acquired a pastel by James McNeill Whistler entitled Campanile at Lido.
EVENTS
Michelangelo, Male Nude (recto), c. 1504-05, pen and brown ink and black chalk on paper. 37.4 x 22.8 cm. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. On display at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from 9 November.
This month we have picked out a selection of new and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Events page.
UK
Wordlwide
Demystifying drawings
Drawing the Italian Renaissance
with Martin Clayton
The Royal Collection houses one of the world’s finest collections of Italian Renaissance drawings, and from November 1 the King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace will play host to the widest range of drawings from the period ever to be shown in the UK. The exhibition spans the years 1450-1600 and will feature around 160 works by over 80 artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian.
On the eve of the exhibition, Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust and exhibition curator, joins the editor to discuss the history of the collection, the goals of the exhibition and the drawing he would most like to take home with him.
Agostino Carracci, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c.1587-90 (recto), Red chalk, pen and ink and wash, with a little oil paint, 47.5 x 34.4 cm, RCIN 901755
Agostino Carracci, Studies of heads, and figures, details, caricatures and trees (verso), Pen and ink, and black chalk, 47.5 x 34.4 cm, RCIN 901755
How do these drawings come to be in the Royal Collection? Do they originate from one principal royal collector as a coherent group, or were there diverse and convoluted routes of entry for individual drawings?
The collecting of drawings has always been a niche activity, and most of the 2,000 or so Renaissance drawings in the Royal Collection were acquired during a single reign, that of Charles II (1660–85). Documentary evidence is almost non-existent, but it is likely that the albums of 555 Leonardos, 85 Holbeins and 30 Parmigianinos, that had been in the collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel before the Civil War, were presented to Charles by Arundel’s grandson around 1670.
Some 150 other drawings bear physical evidence of English seventeenth-century collections they had been in before entering the Royal Collection – the star marks and ascriptions of Nicholas Lanier; William Gibson’s price marks; and the peculiar ‘clipped top corners’ often seen on Italian drawings that were in England in the seventeenth century. (I haven’t been able to determine whether this last feature was the habit of one unidentified collector, or a more general fashion, and I’d be interested to hear of any theories!)
A few Renaissance drawings were acquired individually at auction for George III around the start of his reign in 1760 – probably including the handful of drawings from Sir Peter Lely’s collection, dispersed after Charles II’s death. George III’s mentor, the Earl of Bute, was building a library and collection for the young prince/king, but his greatest coups – the entire collections of Cardinal Alessandro Albani and Consul Joseph Smith, both purchased in 1762 – contained primarily Baroque and later drawings, some 10,000 in number. And when Bute fell from power in 1763, George III’s collecting of drawings ceased. George IV’s interest was mainly in British drawings and prints, and Victoria and Albert collected and commissioned contemporary works. Very few old master drawings have therefore been acquired for the Royal Collection since 1770.
Perhaps the biggest mystery is the provenance of Michelangelo’s fabulous ‘presentation drawings’ – we have no idea of their route from the Farnese collection around 1600 to the Royal Collection, where they were first documented around 1800. They are in pristine condition and were clearly well looked after, and it is baffling that these famous drawings are not mentioned in any known inventory, letter or account for two hundred years.
Last month Dr Claire van Cleave presented the Farnese drawings collection at Capodimonte which has hitherto received little public and scholarly exposure. The Royal Collection, on the other hand, is one of the most widely known, and well catalogued collections in the world. What narrative, thematic, or didactic threads has the display been arranged around?
Because of the way in which the Royal Collection was formed, we have great strengths in areas that were fashionable in seventeenth-century England – for example the ‘muscular Michelangelesque’ – but also weaknesses, such as the Florentine Mannerists. There has never been a curatorial effort to fill the gaps and assemble a representative survey of Italian art. So even though the show consists of 160 drawings by 80 different artists, a conventional arrangement by artist/school/date would have been very ‘lumpy’.
Instead I aim to show how drawing was key to many of the great artistic achievements of the Italian Renaissance. The rapid increase in the availability of paper during this period, and its corresponding fall in price, meant that artists could use drawing experimentally, even wastefully, and by the end of the fifteenth century it had become central to most artists’ practice.
The exhibition explores how artists used drawing – the types of drawings that they made, the creative process and the range of materials. It’s organised in sections that explore figure studies, head studies, drawings of landscape and nature, designs for the applied artists, studies for sacred works (devotional panels, altarpieces and frescoes) and for secular contexts, and ‘finished’ drawings as works of art in their own right. By juxtaposing works from different periods and cities, the visitor will be able to see for themselves the great variety of drawings produced during this period, and hopefully some ‘echoes’ across time and space.
As the exhibition is about the act of drawing, we are providing drawing materials for visitors to use; and excitingly, we have for the first time engaged Artists in Residence for the run of the exhibition – Jesse Ajilore, Sara Lee Roberts and Joshua Pell, all alumni of the Royal Drawing School, who will be drawing in the exhibition on weekday afternoons. They have an open brief to draw in any way they wish, and their works will form a growing display in an adjacent gallery.
Fra Angelico, The bust of a cleric, c.1447-50, Metalpoint, pen and ink and white heightening, on ochre prepared paper, 18.1 x 16.7 cm, RCIN 912812
Were there any surprises that emerged during the research process, or any discoveries that will be on display for the first time?
As you noted, the collection is already well catalogued (and everything is on our online database). But more than thirty sheets in the exhibition have never been shown before, and others not for several decades. One of the highlights, for example, is a large squared study of an ostrich that has a very good claim to be by Titian. The drawing was copied in Van Dyck’s Italian sketchbook with that attribution, and it has exactly the boldness of line and slightly skewed perspective that we see in all of Titian’s (relatively few) chalk drawings. But it hasn’t been exhibited since 1976, and this exhibition will give a new audience the chance to judge it for themselves.
Given the age of some of these drawings, what is the condition of the collection and how has that been maintained over the years? Were any measures required to conserve certain drawings prior to their display, and did these measures lead to any further discoveries?
The condition of the drawings that Charles II acquired is very variable – the Leonardos are in great shape, for example, but other drawings had been damaged by damp, insects and exposure to light. One of the largest works in the exhibition is a cartoon of the Virgin and Child by Bernardino Campi, used for an altarpiece in the town of Codogno near Piacenza. Though it has never been exhibited in modern times, it had clearly been framed and hung at an early date – it was backed with rough canvas, badly wrinkled and abraded, eaten by woodworm and silverfish, and the cheap poor-quality paper was unevenly darkened. For the exhibition our Head of Paper Conservation, Victoria Button, lifted and repaired the cartoon, revealing several of the artist’s patched alterations to the paper as he changed details of the faces and drapery, and an early inscription on the reverse, ‘LA MADONA DI S. VITORE’, suggesting it might also have been used for a lost work for the monastery of San Vittore in Campi’s home town of Cremona.
If you had to choose one drawing from the exhibition to take home with you, what would it be and why?
An impossible question! How do you choose between Fra Angelico’s Head of a Cleric, Andrea del Verrocchio’s Lily, Raphael’s Three Graces or Michelangelo’s Bacchanal of Children? But I am very fond of Agostino Carracci’s Return of the Prodigal Son, a large bold study for a lost altarpiece reportedly painted by his younger brother Annibale. We’re displaying it double-sided because the verso is covered in sketches by several different hands – there are figure and head studies, a landscape and several charming caricatures. For me, the sheet encapsulates the multiple roles of drawing in the Renaissance workshop – a functional tool, a laboratory of ideas and a thing of beauty.
What dates should readers mark for their diaries?
The exhibition runs from 1 November 2024 to 9 March 2025 (closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays), and there is a full programme of lectures, in-conversation events and art activities – see our website www.rct.uk for details.
View the exhibition’s ‘Related Events’ here.
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Elania Pieragostini, Senior Curator of the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, has kindly chosen our fourteenth drawing of the month.
Anthony Van Dyck (Antwerp 1599 – 1641 London)
A Wolf and Fox Hunt, c.1616–17
Black and some red chalk, brush and brown and black ink with brown and green watercolours, 247 × 360 mm, laid down, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, accession number 982
This sheet was historically believed to be a preparatory drawing for the Wolf and Fox Hunt, a painting created by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in 1616 and now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. In his catalogue of the Northern European drawings in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, Michael Jaffé described it as a ricordo, the Italian word for memory or memento. Jaffé correctly identified its unfinished and spontaneous quality as the work by a young Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), then in Rubens’ workshop, recording a portion of the large painting (245.4 x 376.2 cm). However, this drawing is far from a mere copy: the right arm of the man on the right is absent, whereas in the painting he holds a sword. Other people, animals, details from the painting are also omitted, and Van Dyck arguably surpasses Rubens at capturing the fury of the battle, creating a visceral scene, enhanced by circular motion and a heightened sense of dynamism. The drawing is marked by a stark contrast between the right and left sides. The right is only lightly and quickly outlined, in black chalk, while the left side showcases Van Dyck's stronger, layered technique. Over the black chalk, he applied coloured washes and watercolours, lending the scene a warm, painterly quality, particularly noticeable in the musculature of the animals. Van Dyck also excels at conveying the distinct expressions of the figures: the man on the right appears worried, the figure in the background has a wild, almost enraged look, while the elegant knight on the left seems resolute and determined. The gentle, serene expressions of the two horses – drawn using different techniques but positioned almost on the same line – contrast sharply with the violent, angry expressions of the other animals, which even include droplets of blood in the foreground. This sheet is one of approximately 225 in the Devonshire Collection that bear the now-familiar italic ‘F’, the collector’s mark of Anthony Nicholaes Flinck (1646-1722), a wealthy merchant from Rotterdam, amateur etcher and the son of one of Rembrandt’s pupils. Upon Flinck’s death in 1722, his extensive collection of Old Master drawings was acquired by William Cavendish, the 2nd Duke of Devonshire (1672-1729), who was congratulated in this endeavour by the renowned French collector Pierre Crozat (1665-1740): “I take the liberty of congratulating you on the drawings of the late Mr Flinck of Rotterdam that you have just acquired. To my taste it is the most beautiful collection and best chosen that I have ever seen. It will amply enrich your own and make you the richest proprietor in Europe. All the drawings are excellent, specially selected, and altogether worthy to enter your collection, and I know that that already displays an equal discrimination”. This letter serves as a testament to the exceptional quality of the Duke’s collection.
This drawing is part of a group of about fifty Flemish, Dutch, Early Netherlandish and German drawings and watercolours from Chatsworth that will be on display at the National Galleries of Scotland from the 9th November until the of 23rd February 2025 as part of a major collaboration between the two institutions.
REVIEW
Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin (Sep 26, 2024 - Feb 4, 2025)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Reviewed by J. Cabelle Ahn, PhD
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780), Les fêtes vénitiennes, after 1759, 20.5 × 15.1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975, 1975.1.702
In his 1863 essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” Charles Baudelaire names Gabriel de Saint-Aubin as one of the artists whose drawings operate as “precious archives of civilized life.” More than 160 years later, Saint-Aubin’s commitment to chronicling quotidian drama has been reinforced in “Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nes York, September 26, 2024 - February 4, 2025). Curated by Perrin Stein, this exhibition is the first on the draughtsman since the monographic show jointly organized by the Frick and the Louvre in 2007-08. This latest display is thematically divided into nine topics, ranging from types of sites (such as “Church and the City”) to artistic subjects (such as “Glory and Allegory”), and supplemented with works by family members and artists from Saint-Aubin’s professional circles, including his mentors Étienne Jeurat and François Boucher. Sprinkled throughout the show is the promised gift of twenty-one Saint-Aubin drawings from Stephen A. Geiger, whose donation will more than triple the number of drawings by the artist in the Met’s permanent collection.
The exhibition affirms Saint-Aubin’s pre-existing reputation as an unparalleled archivist of commercial affairs and metropolitan happenings, while also offering new insights into the understudied academic elements of his practice. As eighteenth-century specialists would expect, the section titled “Parks, Fairs, and Diversions” features the largest number of sheets, upholding an account in an anonymous Salon pamphlet from 1779 that asked, “Who has not seen [Saint-Aubin] copying, sketching, drawing in our public gardens, our Salons, our auctions, our public squares?” Together, these works underscore the considerable impact his interest in theatre had on both his choices of subject matter and his compositional preferences.
Elsewhere, dense studies incite an urge for the type of source hunting common among many early modern scholars. For instance, a neatly rendered pen and black chalk drawing of the lots from the 1777 Prince de Conti sale features stolid Netherlandish portraits (attributed to Frans van Mieris and Anthony van Dyck) alongside squares of hazy Italianate landscapes and sweeping configurations of Baroque limbs. Sheets such as this confirm why Saint-Aubin’s miniature renditions of the Salon hangs and outlines of auction lots have long operated as Rosetta stones for the pre-nineteenth-century art market.
Geiger’s promised gifts add important nuance to Saint-Aubin’s own under-researched aspirations as a history painter. He was never admitted to the Académie Royale and instead taught courses at the École des Arts (founded by the architect Jacques-Francois Blondel) on human proportions, historical attributes, secular and sacred allegories, and more from 1747 to 1764. Yet a watercolour and gouache drawing of Lot and his Daughter (c. 1750-55), displayed here alongside an etching of Joseph Marie Vien’s treatment of the same subject, reveals not only Saint-Aubin’s interest in mimicking his academic contemporaries but also, in turn, suggests his greater institutional ambitions during this time. In related fashion, two sweeping chalk and grey wash drawings glorifying the French capture of Grenada in 1779 gesture toward his lifelong preoccupation with the iconography and the format of history paintings.
Ultimately, the exhibition situates Saint-Aubin’s cultural, institutional, and commercial gaze within his manifold projects. In one of the wall texts, Stein notes that “the delightful conundrum of Saint-Aubin’s style” is that his works are often “miniature in scale and panoramic in effect.” Similarly, “Paris Through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin” reveals that the artist’s inspirations and technical prowess too are more expansive and encompassing than they might first seem.
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780), Revelers at a Table in the Countryside, 1760s, 25.3 × 19.6 cm, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975, 1975.1.701
Real or Fake
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has long formed a key part of an artist’s education and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
This Dutch 17th-century artist is among the most widely imitated and highly admired draughtsmen of all time, due partly to the scale of his workshop and the number of contemporary followers he attracted, and partly to the vast sums his name commands on the art market. The differentiation between master and pupil has been the topic of much debate and academic revisionism over the centuries. The present example is one whose authorship remains contested, and a classic case study highlighting the difficulties surrounding the oeuvre of this enigmatic artist and his followers. But which is the original and which is the copy, and who is the artist?
Scroll to the end to reveal the answer.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
A Tudor Mystery: The Girl Who Could Be Queen. Not Just the Tudors.
This episode solves the 400-year old mystery of a previously unknown portrait of a young woman, dressed to look just like Queen Elizabeth herself. When Emma Rutherford - the country's leading expert in portrait miniatures - first saw it, she knew that the painting was recognisably by the celebrated Elizabethan court painter Nicholas Hilliard. But who was the mysterious girl depicted? Together, Emma along with Hilliard’s biographer Dr. Elizabeth Goldring set out on some remarkable historical detective work to find out. What they discovered was a story ripe with political importance, espionage, diplomatic intrigue and the question of Elizabeth I's successor.
to watch
In December 2020, Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Joachim Homann sat down for a virtual ‘Coffee with Curators’ event for the Harvard Art Museums. The discussion explores the technical and artistic tools used in Renaissance workshops, examining how drawings served as both educational resources and creative studies for artists. Grasselli and Homann discuss the materials, techniques, and unique qualities of Renaissance drawings, providing insights into their significance and craftsmanship within the artistic traditions of the period, and their legacy within art history more broadly.
to read
A Curator at the Louvre: Charles Coypel and the Royal Collections, Esther Bell
The article explores Charles Coypel's role as a curator of royal collections in 18th-century France. Coypel, a painter and playwright, was appointed as the official curator at the Louvre under King Louis XV. The article details how he managed the king's art collections, influenced their presentation, and contributed to the development of the Louvre as a prominent cultural institution. Coypel's dual role as an artist and administrator highlights the evolving relationship between royal patronage and the arts during this period.
answer
The original, of course, is the lower image. Although the drawing was once thought to be by Rembrandt, it is now attributed to Ferdinand Bol, one of Rembrandt's most celebrated pupils.
Upper image: Anonymous after Ferdinand Bol?, Esau selling his Birthright to Jacob, British Museum, London, 1873,0510.3544
Lower image: attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), Esau selling his Birthright to Jacob, Historisch Museum, Amsterdam
On entering the British Museum in 1873, the lower drawing was attributed to Rembrandt himself, albeit with some degree of doubt. In 1906 the drawing was recognised by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot as a copy of the upper drawing, which is now in the Historisch Museum, Amsterdam. In 1973, Otto Benesch, the great Rembrandt scholar, catalogued the drawing in Amsterdam as an original by Rembrandt, and the British Museum drawing as a copy after it (Benesch 564). There are many copies of subject drawings like this by Rembrandt, and it is believed that he had his pupils copy them.
In 1982 however Peter Schatborn noted that the British Museum's version more correctly shows Esau's gaze directed at Jacob. He also saw improvements in the drawing of Jacob's right hand and in the understanding of the tablecloth. He therefore suggested that both drawings might depend on a now lost original. More recently, Martin Royalton-Kisch has suggested that these attempts at improvement in the British Museum drawing are those of a student copyist, and Evert van den Berg has suggested that they may represent a second attempt by the same artist. Both agree that the British Museum drawing is a copy of the one in Amsterdam.
As if that wasn’t straightforward enough, Royalton-Kisch has also raised doubts over the attribution of the Amsterdam drawing to Rembrandt, suggesting that an attribution to Ferdinand Bol, a Rembrandt pupil, is more likely. He writes in his online catalogue, The Drawings of Rembrandt: “there are several reasons also to assign the Amsterdam drawing to one of his [Rembrandt’s] pupils and it appears to be by the same hand as many studies now attributed to Ferdinand Bol. The modelling, for example, is worked up in many parts, especially in the figure of Esau, and yet remains flat and imprecise; the same figure looks more towards the spectator than at Jacob, and the comparison with Rembrandt’s own version of the subject (Benesch 0606) leaves the present drawing wanting in energy, characterisation and narrative skill. In every part the relative clumsiness of the modelling is revealed […] Yet the attribution to Bol needs to be treated with some caution, as the stylistic connections are less clear with Bol’s documentary drawings […]”
Who would be a Rembrandt scholar?
