with numbers ‘90/6’ (verso) copperplate
7.3 x 5.4 cm, oval

Provenance:
Pieter de Haan (1723-1766), Amsterdam; De Winter et al., Amsterdam, 9 March 1767, p. 234, lot 68 (7 guilders to Fouquet, together with lot 69).
Pieter Fouquet Jr. (1729-1800), Amsterdam.
Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786), Paris, bought before 1785.
Pierre-François Basan (1723-1797), Paris.
Henry-Louis Basan (fl. 1810);
Auguste Jean (d. 1820), Paris and by descent to;
Auguste Jean Veuve, Paris (fl. 1820-1846).
Auguste Bernard, Paris, in 1846 and by descent to his son;
Michel Bernard, Paris, by whom sold in 1906 to;
Alvin Beaumont, Paris, by whom sold to;
Robert Lee Humber, Greenville, North Carolina, and by descent.
Artemis, London and R.M. Light & Co., Santa Barbara, California, 1993, by whom sold to Dr. James H. Lockhart, Jr., Geneseo, New York, 1994, and by descent;
Cottone Auctions, Geneseo, New York, 23 September 2022, lot 173.

Literature:
A.C. Coppier, Les eaux-fortes de Rembrandt, Paris, 1917, p. 130.
E. Hinterding, ‘The history of Rembrandt’s copperplates, with a catalogue of those that survive’, Simiolus, Netherlandisch quarterly for the history of art, vol. 22 (1993-1994), p. 302 and p. 313.
J. Rutgers, The New Hollstein. Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450- 1700. Ferdinand Bol, [forthcoming].

Ferdinand Bol trained with Rembrandt from 1636 to 1640 [1] and in addition to being
one of Rembrandt’s most successful pupils as a painter, Bol was among the few who also achieved considerable success as an etcher. Like Bol’s paintings, his etchings demonstrate Rembrandt’s strong influence, although Bol’s etchings have a distinct quality of their own. His etchings, of which he made about some twenty in total, are often executed with very fine, yet velvety lines. Bol etched his first print in 1636, the first year of his apprenticeship with Rembrandt, which shows a copy in reverse of Rembrandt’s Esther before her visit to Ahasuerus and his last etching is from somewhere around 1653. [2] The present composition is datable to circa 1642 [3] (fig. 1), the same year Bol produced an etched self-portrait. [4]

The present plate’s provenance can be traced back to Pieter de Haan, an Amsterdam print dealer who amassed a monumental collection of prints and drawings including a large number of copperplates. His estate sale included a group of 430 copperplates by artists such as Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685) and Jan Gillisz. van Vliet (circa 1605- 1689) amongst which were 75 plates by Rembrandt. [5] The present plate was lot 68 in the De Haan sale and it was offered together with 23 impressions pulled from the plate. 56 of the Rembrandt plates (or those attributed to Rembrandt at the time) from the De Haan sale, including the present one, were bought by the Amsterdam art dealer Pieter Fouquet Jr. As observed by Erik Hinterding, he might have bought them acting on commission as the plates were soon afterwards owned by the Parisian art critic, collector and engraver Claude-Henri Watelet. The group of plates, which now totalled around 83 [6], were bought en bloc by Pierre-François Basan, a fellow Parisian print dealer and publisher, who published the plates in his famous Rembrandt recueil in 1789. [7] The plates then passed to Pierre-François’ son, Henry-Louis Basan, who pulled a great number of impressions from the plates. The group later came into the possession of another Paris publisher, Auguste Jean (in around 1810), who also published a recueil with impressions from them. [8] The plates remained in Paris (see provenance) until they were sold by Alvin Beaumont in 1938 to Robert Lee Humber who placed them on permanent lone in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. It was only in 1993 when the group was sold by Artemis in London that the plates were dispersed to a global audience of museums and private collectors.

While the present plate was part of the group of Rembrandt copperplates and was long considered to be by Rembrandt, its attribution to the artist was questioned comparatively early on. In his catalogue of Rembrandt etchings from 1751, Edme-François Gersaint [9] accepted the print as by Rembrandt, an opinion that was later followed by Adam von Bartsch, [10] but in 1828 Ignace Joseph de Claussin was the first to publish the print as byFerdinand Bol. [11] He did note that ‘’[...] mais il est reconnu depuis long-temps par les premiers connaisseurs pour être de F. Bol. don’t il porte tous les caractères’12 (but it has long been recognized by leading experts as being by F. Bol, displaying all his characteristic features). Although the attribution to Bol has occasionally been questioned, [13] there is
now general consensus about the it. [14] Leonore van Sloten has observed about the present composition that the rendering of the head is more sketchy than those by Rembrandt
and that the face is only defined by a thin outline and a few hatchings on the sitters face which are typical trademarks of Bol’s use of the etching needle. [15] Van Sloten compares
it to Young woman with hat (Hollstein 16), which shows the face of a woman rendered
in a closely comparable technique and style. [16] That the print was considered to be by Rembrandt for a long time, and the fact that the plate was part of the large group of Rembrandt copperplates, meant that prints were pulled from the plate for centuries. Amongst the later editions in which it was included is Henry-Louis’ Basan’s Recueil de quatre-vingt-cinq estampes originales published in 1807-1808 of which an example is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 2). [17]



[1] L. van Sloten, ‘Ferdinand Bol, the Etcher’, in Rembrandt’s master pupils. Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exhib. cat., The Rembrandt House Museum and Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, 2017- 1018, p. 207.2 L. van Sloten, op. cit., p. 207 and p. 209, figs. 291-292. 3 J. Rugters, op. cit., [forthcoming].
[4] L. van Sloten, ibid., p. 212, fig. 298.
[5] E. Hinterding, op. cit., p. 272.
[6] ibid., p. 276, note. 119.
[7] ibid., p. 276.
[8] ibid., p. 279.
[9] E.-F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt, Paris, 1751, no. 272.
[10] A. von Bartsch, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l'œuvre de Rembrandt et ceux de ses principaux imitateurs / Composé par les Sieurs Gersaint, Helle, Glomy et P. Yver, Vienna, 1797, no. 295.
[11] I.J. de Claussin, Supplément au Catalogue de Rembrandt: suivi d'une description des estampes de ses élèves [...], Paris, 1828, p. 50, no. 18.
[12] I.J. de Claussin, op. cit., p. 18.
[13] D.M. Tsurutani, The Etchings of Ferdinand Bol, MA thesis, Oberlin College, 1974, 70, under Doubtful category, no. D 18.
[14] The print will furthermore be published in the forthcoming volume of The New Hollstein devoted to the artist.
[15] L. van Sloten, Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680). Etchings in the artist’s home, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Museum van Loon, 2000, no. 15, ill.
[16] L. van Sloten, op. cit., no. 14, ill.
[17] Inv. BI-1961-168.