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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a sepia drawing from the School of Rembrandt. In the drawing a boy is seated on a cushion on the floor, his left hand resting on his leg, knees slightly bent. He is gazing directly at the viewer, and is wearing a hat.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"No. 17
SCHOOL OF REMBRANDT
STUDY OF A BOY SEATED ON THE GROUND
British Museum, 1861-8-10-16. Drawn with the brush in sepia, and washed in sepia.
18.2 x 23.5 cm. (7 1/8 x 9 1/4 in.).
One of the most attractive studies of a group which has been variously attributed to Eeckhout, Nicolaas Maes, Gerard and Moses Ter Borch, and Gaspar Netscher. There are two others of the group in the British Museum, a Study of a boy seated on a chair (from the Utterson Collection), and a Study of a youth seated, looking upwards (catalogued in the Malcolm Collection as Gaspar Netscher). When acquired in 1861 the present example was attributed to Maes, while the Boy seated (from the Utterson Collection) was purchased for the Nation in 1858 under the name of Ter Borch.
Two other drawings by the same hand were in the collection of Ploos van Amstel, and engraved in his series of facsimiles under the name of Eeckhout. There was another in the Heseltine Collection, and still one more, a Boy lying on the ground, was reproduced in the Duval Sale catalogue (Muller, Amsterdam, June 22-23, 1910).
Eeckhout, as the oldest attribution, demands serious consideration, in spite of the fact of divergence of style from signed drawings by the master. Of drawings attributed to Eeckhout, a Study of a seated prisoner in the Albertina (Schönbrunner and Meder, Albertina Drawings, No. 636) is the nearest analogy in the use of wash, but I do not know the grounds for the attribution.
The name of Moses Ter Borch is supported by Dr. Bredius on the basis, I believe, of material in the Zebinden Collection of sketches by the various members of the Ter Borch family (now in the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam). The comparisons I have been able to make do not incline me to accept the name of either Moses or Gerard Ter Borch.
Eeckhout produced a few pictures of society genre in a style akin to that of Ter Borch. One of these, a Party of Ladies and Gentlemen on a terrace overlooking a park, signed and dated 1652, was recently exhibited at Messrs. Colnaghi and Obach (Loan Collection, Nov. 1914, No. 8, under title The Garden of Love). Considering this type of Eeckhout's work, I would be all the less inclined to dismiss the old attribution.
Apart from the older attribution, the type of face and character of drawing would almost persuade me to regard Nicolaas Maes as the most likely author. There are traces of sepia wash similarly used on the back of an undated sheet of pen sketches by Maes in the British Museum (Malcolm, 734), and Maes's picture of the Naughty Drummer at the Hague (Schloss Buitenrust) offers a very similar type of figure.
A. M. H."
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Technique: collotype (print)
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn, Study of a boy seated on the ground (1933.440). | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105311 | Go to resource |
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