|
Date: |
|
Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Rembrandt. The drawing is a view containing several buildings. The most prominent is a large, cathedral-like building at the centre, with tall windows. This, along with several other buildings, is on higher ground than the smaller buildings in front of them. In the foreground is a person on horseback followed by a person on foot.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"11.
REMBRANDT
(b. 1606; d. 1669)
VIEW OF WINDSOR
The Albertina, Vienna. From the Collection of Count Morix von Fries. Pen and sepia and wash. 18.2 x 29.5 cm. (7 1/8 x 11 9/16 in.).
An entry in a volume of Vertue's Diaries in the British Museum, dated 1713, reads: 'Renbrant van Rhine was in England, liv'd at Hull in Yorkshire about sixteen or eighteen months where he painted several Gentlemen and sea-faring mens pictures. One of them is in the possession of Mr. Dahl - a sea captain with the gentleman's name Renbrant's name and York and the year 1662/1. Christian'; and in the margin, 'Reported by old Laroon who in his youth knew Renbrant at York'.¹ Hitherto the only works which have been cited in support of this visit are a drawing of Old St. Paul's in Berlin, and another more detailed version of the same in the Albertina,² but it seemed very possible, and not inconsistent with what was known of his activity in Amsterdam at this period, that the tradition of a visit about 1661-2 was correct. Now a new date is given for another possible visit to England by the signature Rembrandt f. 1640 on the present drawing, evidently based on St. Albans, which was recently discovered by Dr. de Groot.³ Moreover, the same signature and date occurs on a drawing in the Albertina (reproduced on Plate 11), which appears to be a variation on motives in the architecture of Windsor Castle.
I had previously expressed the opinion that the Albertina drawing of St. Paul's was a school drawing after a lost original, but assumed the probability of a study in that form being the basis for Rembrandt's more summary sketch in Berlin.
In view of the present material I am ready to accept both Albertina drawings as authentic Rembrandt's, and the detailed drawing of Old St. Paul's, done as it appears from nature, becomes a stronger support of a visit to England, but so exactly in the style of the drawing of Windsor that the date of this visit may well have been 1640.
[¹ B.M., MS. Add. 21, 111, fol. 8. The 'Christian' given as the author of the tradition is no doubt Christian Reisen (about 1680-1725, the son of a Norwegian goldsmith who settled in London about 1666. Marcellus Laroon would only have been eight at the time of the visit reported.]
[² See C. Hofstede de Groot, Oud-Holland, XV. 193, and A. M. Hind and A. E. Henderson, Burlington Magazine, XVII. 334.]
[³ See C. Hofstede de Groot, 'Rembrandt's Reizen naar Engeland', Oud-Holland, XXXIX. 1.]
On the other hand, the drawing of Windsor is so fantastic a mélange of Dutch and English motives that, judging it apart fom the other examples, it would be just as reasonable to suppose it done in Holland, after the drawings or prints of other artists, as in England. But what these originals can have been does not appear, and the same may be said of the drawing of St. Albans, so that there is still a considerable presumption in favour of their having been done on a visit to England. The nearest print to the St. Albans subject which can be cited is Daniel King's etching of the South Side in Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum (1655), but it does not seem to be sufficient to have formed a basis for Rembrandt's drawing. The steps leading up to a door in the South Transept are probably an invention of the artist, for there is no record of their existence at that period.
And the nearest that I find to the drawing of Windsor is the etching by Hollar (P. 1073, Prospect from West and by South), while a comparison with the other Hollar etchings of Windsor shows the existence of details such as the drawbridge at the gate. But these again are not enough to have been Rembrandt's material, and their date (between 1660 and 1672, many of them being used in Elias Ashmole's Order of the Garter, 1672) is of a later period.
It is of interest to note that by about 1640 there were at least two pictures by Rembrandt in Charles I's Collection, given him by the Earl of Ancrum.¹ Jan Livens had visited England, and is said to have painted the King and other members of the Royal Family between 1629 and 1632 (though none of these portraits is identified). It would be interesting if records were found showing that Rembrandt visited London and Windsor in 1640 at the instance of King Charles I.
A. M. H.
[¹ See Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot. Urkunden über Rembrandt, 1906, No. 75 and George Vertue's Transcription of a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, A Catalogue and Description of King Charles the I's Collection, London (W. Bathoe), 1757, pp. 146, 147 and 150.]"
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Rembrandt, View of Windsor (LC 1131/11). | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105375 | Go to resource |
|
|