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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2004.181
People
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Dutch (Leiden 1606 - 1669 Amsterdam)
Title
A Farm on the Amsteldijk (?)
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
c. 1648-50
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/213432

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Brown ink, brown wash, and white opaque watercolor on cream antique laid paper
Dimensions
10.9 x 22.1 cm (4 5/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • collector's mark: lower left, black ink: L. 959 (Nicolaes Flinck)
  • collector's mark: verso, lower right, blue ink stamp: L. 3306 (Maida and George Abrams)
  • watermark: none

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Nicolaes Anthoni Flinck, Rotterdam (L. 959, lower left), sold from his estate; to William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, 1723, by descent; to Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, sold; [Christie's, London, 3 July 1984, lot 66]; to Maida and George Abrams, Boston (L. 3306, verso, lower right); The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Gift of George Abrams in memory of Maida Abrams

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. 71 by William W. Robinson:

A Farm on the Amsteldijk(?) is one of twenty-seven landscape drawings attributed to Rembrandt that were acquired in 1723 by William Cavendish, Second Duke of Devonshire, and preserved at Chatsworth House until the 1980s. The Second Duke purchased them from the estate of Nicolaes Anthoni Flinck (1646–1723), a director of the East India Company and son of Rembrandt’s pupil Govert Flinck. The drawings probably remained together from 1658, when the insolvent master’s papiere kunst was sold at auction, until twelve were dispersed at auction in 1984 and 1987.1

A supreme example of Rembrandt’s use of ink and wash to describe detail as well as evoke the endless meadows of the Dutch countryside, the movement of air and water, and the fleeting glimmer of sunlight on weathered thatch and wood, the Harvard drawing can be dated on the basis of its composition and technique to the early 1650s.2 It depicts a farmhouse of the langhuis-stolp (literally, “longhouse bell”) type that was common in the region around Amsterdam. Rising prominently at the center of the sheet is the tall hump of the stolp, where the animals’ stalls and hay storage would be located. The lower langhuis, which extends from the stolp and would contain the living quarters, nestles behind the trees to the left. Farther left is a fence with a gate that secures the meadow from which Rembrandt sketched the site.3 Immediately to the right of the gate is a small shed with a peaked plank roof, which is more fully visible in a drawing of the same farmstead attributed to Rembrandt’s pupil Pieter de With (Fig. 1).4 Next to it are a dovecote on stilts and the low plank wall of a boathouse. The tall tower to the right of the stolp would probably serve as a landing stage for pigeons. Beneath it, behind a pile of hay or manure, we see a wagon wheel supported on an axle driven into the soil.5

The wagon wheel appears at the center of a drawing in the Art Institute of Chicago, which shows the back of the farmhouse from the meadow where the cows graze in the Harvard work (Fig. 2).6 At the left of the Chicago sheet, we see the boathouse head-on and the dovecote behind it. The Chicago landscape and a drawing in the Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris (the latter sketched from the side of the house opposite the one depicted in the Harvard view) enable us to identify the pole and rigging behind the wagon wheel as one of two supports used for drying fishing nets. We also learn from the Chicago and Paris studies of a large hayrick rising on the other side of the house.7 A drawing by De With that shows much the same view as Rembrandt’s Paris work attests that the master and his pupils occasionally drew the same motifs, perhaps at the same time.8

The study by De With reproduced in Figure 1 and a sketch by Rembrandt in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, show the same side of the house as the Harvard view, but from a greater distance.9 They include more of the wooden fence that abuts the gate at the far left of the Harvard sheet and separates the meadow from the road. A building immediately adjacent to the farmhouse has a sign toward the road, documented only in De With’s study, indicating it to be an inn.10 Specialists in Amsterdam topography speculate that the farm would have been located on a dyke along the river Amstel, between the country house Kostverloren and the village of Ouderkerk.11 That the river is not clearly indicated in the recently discovered drawing by De With (see Fig. 1) casts some doubt on the identification of the site as the Amsteldijk.12

Notes

1 Peter Schatborn, “Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen van Rembrandt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 32 (Bussum, Netherlands, 1981): 1–54, pp. 16–21. Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings (Turin, London and Venice, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 16–17. The sales of drawings from Chatsworth took place at Christie’s, London, 3 July 1984 and 6 July 1987.

2 Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, enlarged and edited by Eva Benesch (Oxford, 1973), vol. 6, cat. 1295, p. 351. Jaffé, vol. 3, cat. 1484, p. 416.

3 See Boudewijn Bakker in Cynthia Schneider, Rembrandt’s Landcapes: Drawings and Prints (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990), pp. 48–50; Cynthia Schneider, pp. 104–7; and Boudewijn Bakker, Mària van Berge-Gerbaud, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz, Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks (Amsterdam: Stadsarchief / Gemeentearchief Amsterdam; Paris: Fondation Custodia, 1998), pp. 290–97.

4 Pieter de With, _A Farm on the Amsteldijk_(?) (Fig. 1). Brown ink, brown and gray wash; 112 × 155 mm. Sale, Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2009, lot 41.

5 Boudewijn Bakker in Schneider, pp. 48–50; Cynthia Schneider in idem, pp. 104–7; and Boudewijn Bakker, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz in Bakker et al., pp. 290–97.

6 Rembrandt van Rijn, _A Farm on the Amsteldijk_(?) (Fig. 2). Brown ink and brown wash; 149 × 248 mm. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1953.37. Benesch, cat. 1297; Boudewijn Bakker, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz in Bakker et al., pp. 292–93.

7 Rembrandt van Rijn, A Farm on the Amsteldijk(?). Brown ink and brown wash, white opaque watercolor; 143 × 270 mm. Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, 302. Benesch, cat. 1296; Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and His Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection (Bussum, Netherlands, 2010), cat. 17, pp. 69–73; Boudewijn Bakker, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz in Bakker et al., pp. 292–95. An adjacent property, to the right of the drying nets in Figure 2, comprised a tumbledown thatched cottage—depicted on its own in a drawing by Rembrandt in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (Mària van Berge-Gerbaud in Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Mària van Berge‑Gerbaud, and Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt et son entourage, Paris: École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts; Ajaccio, France: Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2012, cat. 6, pp. 42–44; and Boudewijn Bakker, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz in Bakker et al., p. 293, ill. 3)—and a brick house with two chimneys and a separate kitchen building.

8 Peter Schatborn in Holm Bevers, Lee Hendrix, William W. Robinson, and Peter Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009), cats. 37.1 and 37.2.

9 See n. 4 for the study by Pieter de With. For the drawing in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Benesch, cat. 1299), see Jane Shoaf Turner and Christopher White, Dutch & Flemish Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 2014), cat. 161, pp. 212–14.

10 Schatborn (2010), under cat. 17, pp. 70–71.

11 Boudewijn Bakker, Jan Peeters, and Erik Schmitz in Bakker et al., pp. 296–97.

12 Schatborn (2010), under cat. 17, pp. 70–71.

Figures

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gift of George Abrams in memory of Maida Abrams
Accession Year
2004
Object Number
2004.181
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Wilhelm von Bode, Sidney Colvin, and Francis Seymour Haden, Original Drawings by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. Produced in Phototype, ed. Friedrich Lippmann, Karl W. Hiersemann (London, Berlin, and Leipzig, 1888-1892), part 2, no. 70, repr.
  • Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, E. F. Bohn (Haarlem, 1906), cat. no. 856, p. 195
  • Friedrich Lippmann, ed., Original Drawings by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. Reproduced in the Colours of the Originals by Emrik and Binger at Haarlem, Martinus Nijhoff (The Hague, 1914-1920), first series, part 2, no. 70, repr.
  • Frits Lugt, "Wandelingen met Rembrandt in Amsterdam", Feest-bundel Dr. Abraham Bredius aangeboden den achttienden April, 1915, Gebroeders Binger (1915), pp. 138-177, vol. 1, p. 141, repr. vol. 2, pl. 51, fig. 4
  • Frits Lugt, Wandelingen met Rembrandt in en om Amsterdam, P. N. van Kampen & Zoon (Amsterdam, 1915), pp. 5-6, repr. fig. 4
  • Frits Lugt, Mit Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Die Darstellungen Rembrandts vom Amsterdamer Stadtbilde und von der unmittelbaren Landschaftlichen Umgebung, exh. cat., Bruno Cassirer (Berlin, 1920), p. 5, repr. fig. 4
  • F. Schmidt-Degener and D. C. Röell, Rembrandt Tentoonstelling ter Herdenking van de Plechtige Opening van het Rijksmuseum op 13 Juli 1885, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1935), cat. no. 78, p. 73
  • Otto Benesch, Rembrandt Werk und Forschung, Gilhofer & Ranschburg (Vienna, 1935), p. 57
  • Otto Benesch, Rembrandt, Selected Drawings (London and New York, 1947), vol. 1, cat. no. 218, p. 42, repr. vol. 2, pl. 218
  • H. E. van Gelder, Rembrandt en het landschap, H. J. W. Becht (Amsterdam, 1948), p. 19, repr. p. 9
  • Arthur E. Popham, Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, London (London, 1949), cat. no. 41, p. 22
  • Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, Phaidon Press (Oxford, 1954 - 1957), vol. 6, cat. no. 1295, p. 363, repr. fig. 1525
  • Francis Thompson and English Life Publications Ltd., The Devonshire Collection. Old Master Drawings at Chatsworth. Reproductions of Thirty Drawings by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1606-1669. (Derby, England, 1957), repr. fig. 1042
  • Arthur E. Popham and Thomas Wragg, Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth: A Loan Exhibition from the Devonshire Collection, exh. cat., Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C., 1962), cat. no. 94, p. 39
  • Seymour Slive, Drawings of Rembrandt, Dover Publications Inc. (New York, 1965), vol. 1, cat. no. 70, repr.
  • Carlos van Hasselt, Dessins des Paysagistes hollandais du XVIIe siecle, exh. cat., Bibliotheque royal de Belgique (Brussels, 1968), under cat. no. 119, p. 121
  • Arthur E. Popham and Thomas Wragg, Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth: A Loan Exhibition from the Devonshire Collection, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1969), cat. no. 94, p. 39, repr. fig. 94
  • Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt [enlarged ed.], Phaidon Press (Oxford, 1973), vol. 6, cat. no. 1295, p. 351, repr. fig. 1604
  • A.W.F.M. Meij, ed., Dessins flamands et hollandais du dix-septième siècle: collections Musées de Belgique, Musée Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, exh. cat., Institut Néerlandais (Paris, 1974), under cat. no. 81, p. 108
  • Rembrandt and His Century: Dutch drawings of the seventeenth century from the collection of Frits Lugt, exh. cat., The Morgan Library & Museum (New York, 1978), under cat. no. 92, p. 134
  • Seymour Slive, Rembrandt Landscape Drawings: 60 Works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Dover Publications Inc. (New York, 1981), cat. no. 44, n.p., repr.
  • Frederik J. Duparc, Landscape in Perspective: Drawings by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat., The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, 1988), cat. no. 75, p. 183, repr. and repr. color, p. 42, fig. 75
  • Peter Schatborn, "Met Rembrandt naar buiten", Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (1990), vol. 90, no. 1-2, pp. 31-39, pp. 33-34
  • Cynthia Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. (1990), cat. no. 17, pp. 106-107, repr., and pp. 30 (n. 5) and 47-40
  • Frederik J. Duparc, "[Review] Collectie Abrams in Rijksprentenkabinet", Tableau (1991), vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 40-42, pp. 41-42
  • 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), cat. no. 57, pp. 10 and 132-33, repr.
  • George S. Keyes, "[Review] Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings. A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection", Master Drawings (Winter 1992), vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 443-448, p. 446
  • Daniel Gross, "Dutch Treats", Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, MA, September-October 1992), vol. 95, no. 1, pp. 41-45, p. 45, repr. p. 43
  • Mària van Berge-Gerbaud, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins de la collection Frits Lugt, exh. cat., Fondation Custodia (Paris, 1997), under cat. no. 17, pp. 44 and 46 (n. 5)
  • Boudewijn Bakker, Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat., Thoth Publishers (Bussum, 1998), pp. 290-91, repr. p. 291, Ill. 1
  • William W. Robinson, "Abrams Dutch Drawings Given to the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.", Apollo (December 1999), vol. 150, pp. 14-16, pp. 14-15, repr. fig. 1
  • James Cuno, ed., A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions by the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, Mass., Spring 2000), p. 50, repr.
  • 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, pp. 86 and 97 (n.11), repr. p. 88, fig. 4
  • 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), cat. no. 55, pp. 136-37 and 259, repr.
  • Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings, Umberto Allemandi & C. (Turin, London and Venice, 2002), vol. 3, cat. no. 1484, p. 416, repr.
  • Jeanne Faton, "Entretien avec George Abrams: Dessins de l'âge d'or hollandais", L'Estampille/L'Objet d'art (April 2003), no. 379, pp. 46-55, repr. p. 51
  • Michiel C. Plomp, "[Review] Bruegel to Rembrandt. Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection.", Oud Holland (2004), vol. 117, no. 1/2, pp. 99-102, pp. 99 and 101 (n. 3)
  • Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums Annual Report 2004-2005 (Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 22, repr.
  • Susan Lumenello, "Picturing an Exhibition: On the Making of 'Rembrandt'", Colloquy [Harvard Alumni Quarterly] (Fall 2006), pp. 2-3, 11, repr. p. 3
  • Ivan Gaskell, Rembrandt and the Aesthetics of Technique, brochure, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2006), checklist
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 99, repr.
  • Holm Bevers, Lee Hendrix, William W. Robinson, and Peter Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, 2009), under cat. no. 37, p. 221 (n.) 6
  • Old Master and 19th Century Drawings, auct. cat. (New York, January 29, 2009), under lot 41, p. 38
  • Martin Royalton-Kisch, "Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils" [review], The Burlington Magazine (February 2011), vol. 153, no. 1295, pp. 97-102, p. 101
  • 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. 9, pp. 11-12, 31 and 54-55, repr.
  • Gregory Rubinstein, "[Review] Rembrandt Drawings", The Burlington Magazine (January 2012), vol. 154, no. 1306, pp. 65-66, p. 66
  • 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. 6, p. 44
  • Jane Turner and Christopher White, Dutch & Flemish Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A Publishing (London, 2014), vol. 1, under cat. no. 161, p. 213
  • Stijn Alsteens, [Review] William W. Robinson, with Susan Anderson, "Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums" (Winter 2015), p. 532
  • Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections: The Age of Bernini, Rembrandt, and Poussin, ed. Shelley Perlove and George S. Keyes, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, 2015), under cat. no. 66, p. 166 (n. 148)
  • 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), p. 19, 21, and 239; cat. no. 71, pp. 240-242, repr. p. 243
  • Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt: The Complete Drawings and Etchings, Taschen (Cologne, 2019), cat. no. D546, p. 351, repr.
  • Achim Gnann, Rembrandt: Landschaftszeichnungen, Landscape Drawings, Michael Imhof Verlag (Petersberg, Germany, 2021), pp. 258-59, repr. p. 258, fig. 238
  • Joanna Sheers Seidenstein and Susan Anderson, ed., Crossroads: Drawing the Dutch Landscape, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, 2022), pp. 125, 129, 147 n. 31, 225, 231, repr. p. 124 as fig. 1
  • Malcolm Gay, Jam on a Rembrandt and other adventures in collecting, The Boston Globe, Boston Globe (08/05/2022), p.G6; repr. on p.G6

Exhibition History

  • Rembrandt Tentoonstelling, Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 01/01/1935 - 12/31/1935
  • Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth, Arts Council Gallery, London, London, 01/01/1949 - 12/31/1949
  • Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth: A Loan Exhibition from the Devonshire Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 10/27/1962 - 11/25/1962; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 12/04/1962 - 01/05/1963; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 01/17/1963 - 02/17/1963; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 03/01/1963 - 03/31/1963; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 04/12/1963 - 05/12/1963; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 05/24/1963 - 06/23/1963; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 07/06/1963 - 08/04/1963
  • Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth; A Loan Exhibition from the Devonshire Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 07/05/1969 - 08/31/1969
  • Landscape in Perspective: Drawings by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/20/1988 - 04/03/1988; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, 04/15/1988 - 05/29/1988
  • Rembrandt's Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 03/11/1990 - 05/20/1990
  • Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings: A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 02/23/1991 - 04/18/1991; Albertina Gallery, Vienna, 05/16/1991 - 06/30/1991; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 01/22/1992 - 04/22/1992; Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 10/10/1992 - 12/06/1992
  • A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings from 1480 to 1940, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/25/2000 - 07/02/2000
  • Bruegel to Rembrandt: Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, British Museum, London, 06/13/2002 - 09/22/2002; Institut Néerlandais, Paris, 10/10/2002 - 12/08/2002; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/22/2003 - 07/06/2003
  • Rembrandt and the Aesthetics of Technique, Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 09/09/2006 - 12/10/2006
  • Drawings by Rembrandt, his Students and Circle from the Collection of Maida and George Abrams, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, 09/24/2011 - 01/08/2012
  • Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/21/2016 - 08/14/2016
  • Crossroads: Drawing the Dutch Landscape, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/21/2022 - 08/14/2022

Subjects and Contexts

  • Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings
  • Google Art Project
  • Collection Highlights

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