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Figure drawing of a female nude leaning right, facing the viewer, her neck stretched upward looking to the upper right.

The young fair-skinned woman is seated leaning to the right on drapery; her right leg is slightly bent and extends further out than the left. Her body makes a diagonal starting from her right leg toes pointing to the lower left of the drawing, through her torso leaning right, her neck stretched upward looking to the upper right. Her right arm is bent at the elbow with her right hand almost touching her shoulder. Her straightened left arm and hand supports her weight. Her upraised face is in profile as she looks upward with open eyes and parted lips. 

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2013.170
People
Jacob Adriaensz. Backer, Dutch (Harlingen, Netherlands 1608/09 - 1651 Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Title
Seated Female Nude (Study for Venus)
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
c. 1650
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/286334

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Black and white chalk on blue antique laid paper, double framing line in brown ink
Dimensions
32.3 x 23.2 cm (12 11/16 x 9 1/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • inscription: verso, upper right, brown ink: 60000
  • inscription: verso, lower left, brown ink: f2 JB VI
  • inscription: verso, lower left, graphite: inlay Blu / clip repair B
  • inscription: verso, lower left, graphite: Jacob Bakker het Schilderij bij Rapoen
  • inscription: verso, lower right, graphite: 7
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (1 of 2), graphite, center: Jacob Backer / Study of Venus Adonis + Cupid / Cassell Gallery. / Exhibited [underlined] Arts Council1962 / See Jakob Adriaens Backer No 5 / in Kurt Bauch
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (1 of 2), lower left, brown ink: see Jakob Adriaens / [cut off]
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (1 of 2), verso, lower center, graphite: 80 [encircled]
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (1 of 2), verso, lower center and lower right, brown ink: 29 [cut off ] / 214 [crossed out]
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), graphite, upper center: CATALOGUE N 30 / Jacob Backer (1608-1651)
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), graphite, center: Backer / Coll. Rudolf
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), verso, right center: S [encircled]
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), lower left, graphite: 79 [encircled and crossed out] / 80 [encircled]
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), lower center, graphite: Study of Venus for Venus Adonis and Cupid / Black chalk heightened with white on blue green paper / 323 x 231 mm / Exhibited Arts Council 1962 / Literatur Jacob Adriaen Backer No 55 / by Kurt Bauch
  • inscription: fragment of former mount (2 of 2), verso, upper left, brown ink: 9 1/2 x 13 1/8
  • watermark: none

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Carl Robert Rudolf, London (without his mark, L. 2811b). [Alfred Brod Gallery, London], sold; to Maida and George Abrams, Boston, c. 1972 (without their mark, L. 3306); The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Gift of George S. Abrams in Appreciation of William Robinson’s services as Curator of Drawings, 1990 to 2013, 2013.170.

Published Text

Catalogue
Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums
Authors
William W. Robinson and Susan Anderson
Publisher
Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2016)

Catalogue entry no. 2 by William W. Robinson:

Jacob Backer probably studied painting in Amsterdam, but his first teacher remains unidentified. In 1626, at the age of eighteen, he entered the workshop of the history painter Lambert Jacobsz. in Leeuwarden, presumably as an advanced student or trained assistant. His employment lasted about six years, during which Govert Flinck (1999.140, 25.1998.53), seven years Backer’s junior, was Lambert Jacobsz.’s pupil. By 1633, Backer returned to Amsterdam and quickly established himself as a portraitist and painter of biblical and mythological subjects.1 He and Flinck—who returned with Backer to Amsterdam and completed his artistic education with Rembrandt around 1635–36—became leading exponents of the classicizing style adopted by Dutch history painters in the 1640s.2 There is no evidence to support the persistent assertion that Backer, too, was a pupil or associate of Rembrandt.3

Arnold Houbraken wrote in 1718 that he could not do justice to Backer’s reputation without mentioning “his outstanding way of drawing. Certainly he drew his Academy figures, especially the women, so artfully on blue paper with black and white chalk, that he took the crown from all his contemporaries.”4 Studies in black and white chalk on blue paper of single figures, nude and clothed, comprise the great majority of Backer’s surviving drawings.5 Only a few are securely attributable to him because they bear an autograph signature or served as studies for paintings.6 The Harvard work is one of two female nudes that he translated into a painting and, as such, provides a valuable reference for distinguishing Backer’s studies from those by Flinck and others who drew from live models in the same media and, occasionally, during the same session.7

Backer executed the study in preparation for painting the nearly life-size goddess in Venus, Adonis, and Amor (c. 1650–51; Fig. 1).8 He posed the model as Venus would appear on the canvas, adding a swath of drapery to cover her lower body and adjusting her legs and right hand. The left arm, on which she leans in the drawing, disappears behind Adonis’s back on the canvas.

The eighteenth-century inscription on the verso of the sheet, Jacob Bakker het Schilderij bij Rapoen (“Jacob Bakker the painting with Rapoen”), provides a clue to the provenance of the picture (see Fig. 1) before its acquisition by the ruling family of Hesse-Cassel, where it was first documented in 1749.9 Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify with certainty the family with the surname Rapoen or Raphoen that owned Venus, Adonis, and Amor before the middle of the eighteenth century.10

Notes

1 Jaap van der Veen and Peter van den Brink, Jacob Backer (1608/9–1651) (Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Aachen, Germany: Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, 2008), pp. 14–18 and 29–34.

2 For the date of Flinck’s return to Amsterdam and his stay of about one year in Rembrandt’s workshop, see Peter Schatborn, “The Early Rembrandtesque Drawings of Govert Flinck,” Master Drawings, vol. 48, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 4-38, p. 4.

3 Van den Brink in Van der Veen and Van den Brink, pp. 29–30.

4 “Ik had byna vergeten (en zou dus zyn roem by verzuim benadeeld) van zyne uitstekende wyze van teekenen te melden. Zeker hy heeft zyne Academiebeelden, inzonderheid de vrouwtjes zoo konstig op blaau papier met zwart en wit kryt geteekent, dat hy daar door de kroon van alle zyne tydgenooten heeft weg gedragen.” Arnold Houbraken, De groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen (First ed. 1718–21; reprint Amsterdam, 1943), vol. 1, p. 338.

5 Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School (New York, 1979), vol. 1, cats. 1–86xx, pp. 16–186.

6 Ibid., cats. 1–12; Van den Brink in Van der Veen and Van den Brink, pp. 69–78.

7 For Backer’s studies of female nudes, see Peter van den Brink and Michiel Kersten in Van der Veen and Van den Brink, cats. 53–55, pp. 69–72 and pp. 193–99. For the other study of a female nude used by Backer in a painting, see William W. Robinson, “Another Connected Female Nude by Jacob Backer,” in Mélanges pour Marie (Paris, 2010), pp. 57–58.

8 Jacob Backer, Venus, Adonis, and Amor (Fig. 1), c. 1650–51. Oil on canvas; 200 × 237.4 cm. Kurhessische Hausstiftung, Schloss Fasanerie, Eichenzell, B 495. Van der Veen and Van den Brink, cat. 37, pp. 168–69, and cat. A133, pp. 248–49. Christopher White in Philip Pouncey and Christopher White et al., Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C. R. Rudolf (London: Arts Council of Great Britain; Birmingham, UK: City Museum and Art Gallery; Leeds, UK: City Art Gallery, 1962), cat. 80, p. 18, was the first modern art historian to connect the drawing to the painting Venus and Adonis, but, as noted below, the relationship of the drawing and the painting was known to an eighteenth-century owner of the study.

9 On the provenance of the painting, see Gregor J. H. Weber et al., Rembrandt-Bilder: Die historische Sammlung der Kasseler Gemäldegalerie (Munich, 2006), cat. B10, p. 243.

10 Possibly the owner was Amsterdam native Frederik Raphoen (1646–1720), who bought a house on the Herengracht in 1700, but there is no evidence that he owned the painting.

Figures

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gift of George S. Abrams in appreciation of William Robinson's services as Curator of Drawings, 1988-2013
Accession Year
2013
Object Number
2013.170
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • C. R. Rudolf, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C. R. Rudolf, Arts Council of Great Britain, London (London, England, 1962), cat. no. 80, p. 18, repr. pl. 13
  • Werner Sumowski, "Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seines Kreises im Kupferstichkabinett der Veste Coburg", Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung (1963), no. 8, pp. 89-106, p. 91
  • J. W. von Moltke, "Einige Beobachtungen zu Zeichnungen des Govaert Flinck", Festschrift Dr. h.c. Eduard Trautscholdt, Dr. Ernst Hauswedell & Co. (Hamburg, 1965), pp. 125-126 (n. 3)
  • J. W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, Menno Hertzberger & Co. (Amsterdam, 1965), p. 48
  • Rembrandt et son temps: Dessins des collections publiques et privées conservées en France, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre (Paris, 1970), under cat. no. 239, n.p.
  • Old Master Drawings, auct. cat., Alfred Brod Gallery (London, 1972), cat. no. 43, n.p., repr.
  • Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. Walter Strauss, Abaris Books (New York, NY, 1979), vol. 1, cat. no. 12, pp. 38-39, repr., and under cat. no. 54x, p. 112
  • Albert Blankert, Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 1980), under cat. no. 52, p. 206
  • The Draughtsman at Work. Drawing in the Golden Century of Dutch Art, checklist (unpublished, 1980), no. 43
  • Peter Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat., Government Publishing Office (The Hague, Netherlands, 1981), p. 90
  • Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Banden (Landau, 1983), vol. 1, under cat. no. 14, p. 195
  • H. R. Hoetink, The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, Meulenhoff/Landshoff and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (Amsterdam and New York, 1985), p. 37, repr. p. 35, fig. 4
  • William W. Robinson, Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings: A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat., H. O. Zimman, Inc. (Lynn, MA, 1991), under cat. no. 50, p. 118, repr. fig. 1
  • D. R. Horst, "Backer, Jacob", Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, K. G. Saur (Munich, Germany, 1992), vol. 6, pp. 169-70, p. 170
  • Peter van den Brink, Het Gedroomde Land: Pastorale schilderkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat., Waanders Uitgevers and Centraal Museum Utrecht (Zwolle, 1993), under cat. no. 5, p. 94 (n. 8)
  • B.P.J. Broos, "Jacob (Adriaensz.) Backer", The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, Grove's Dictionaries (1996), vol. 3, pp. 22-23, p. 23 (erroneously as Sumowski no. 54x)
  • Peter van den Brink, "David geeft Uria de brief voor Joab: Niet Govert Flinck, maar Jacob Backer", Oud Holland (1997), vol. 111, no. 3, pp. 177-86, pp. 183 and 186 (n. 41)
  • Albert Blankert, Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting, exh. cat., Nai Publishers (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1999), under cat. no. 25, p. 160, repr. p. 162, fig. 25a
  • Seymour Slive, "Collecting 17th-century Dutch art in the United States: the current boom", Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum (2001), vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 84-99, p. 97 (n. 11)
  • William W. Robinson, Bruegel to Rembrandt: Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2002), under cat. no. 49, p. 124, repr. fig. 1
  • Peter van den Brink, Jacob Backer (1608/9-1651), exh. cat., Waanders Uitgevers (Zwolle, 2008), cat. no. 55, pp. 198-99, repr., and pp. 70-72, under cat. no. 37, p. 168, under cat. no. 54, p. 195, and accompanying CD-ROM, repr. under cat. no. A133
  • Quentin Buvelot, "[Review] Jacob Backer, Amsterdam and Aachen", The Burlington Magazine (February 2009), vol. 151, no. 1271, pp. 123-24, p. 124
  • William W. Robinson, "Another Connected Female Nude by Jacob Backer", Mélanges pour Marie, ed. Jeroen Giltaij, Fondation Custodia (Paris, 2010), pp. 57-58, pp. 57-58
  • Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, Thoth Publishers and Fondation Custodia (2010), vol. 1, under cat. no. 32, p. 104
  • Erna Kok, “Een liefdespaar onthuld. Jacob Adriaensz Backer’s zogenoemnde David en Bathseba opnieuw geidentificeerd als Isaäk en Rebekka", Oud Holland (2011), vol. 124, no. 2/3, pp. 119-40, p. 124, repr., fig. 5
  • Peter C. Sutton and William W. Robinson, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Students and Circle from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat., Bruce Museum and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2011), cat. no. 18, pp. 72-73, repr., and under cat. no. 17, p. 70
  • Annemarie Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen 1450-1850: Kupferstichkabinett der Hamburger Kunsthalle, ed. Andreas Stolzenburg and Hubertus Gaßner, Böhlau Verlag (Cologne, 2011), vol. 1, under cat. no. 33, p. 81
  • Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Mària van Berge-Gerbaud, and Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt et son entourage, exh. cat., Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 2012), under cat. no. 10, p. 53
  • Ger Luijten, Peter Schatborn, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Skira (Washington, DC, 2016), cat. no. 70, pp. 178-180, 275-276, repr. p. 179
  • William W. Robinson and Susan Anderson, Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2016), cat. no. 2, pp. 31-33, repr. p. 32
  • William W. Robinson, "[Review] Holm Bevers, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett: Kritischer Katalog, Master Drawings (Spring 2020), LVIII, no. 1, pp. 113-122, p. 14, note 6 (p. 121)
  • Annemarie Stefes, "A new Backer drawing in Bremen", Delineavit et Sculpsit: Journal for Dutch and Flemish Prints and Drawings (April 2021), no. 48, pp. 2-9, pp. 3-4, repr. p. 4 as fig. 2

Exhibition History

  • Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C. R. Rudolf, Arts Council Gallery, London, London, 01/05/1962 - 02/03/1962; City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 02/17/1962 - 03/11/1962; Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, 03/17/1962 - 04/07/1962
  • The Draughtsman at Work. Drawing in the Golden Century of Dutch Art, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 11/21/1980 - 01/04/1981
  • Rembrandt and His School: Drawings from the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen Rotterdam, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 12/02/1989 - 01/28/1990
  • Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608/9-1651), The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, 11/29/2008 - 02/22/2009; Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, Aachen, 03/11/2009 - 06/07/2009
  • Drawings by Rembrandt, his Students and Circle from the Collection of Maida and George Abrams, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, 09/24/2011 - 01/08/2012; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, 04/15/2012 - 07/08/2012
  • 32Q: 2300 Dutch & Flemish, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/01/2023 - 09/11/2023
  • Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 10/04/2016 - 01/02/2017

Subjects and Contexts

  • Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu