Lot 163: A seated man wearing a hat

Attributed to Arent de Gelder (Dordrecht 1645-1727) A seated man wearing a hat pen and brown ink, brown wash, inscribed arch, the upper left corner made up 3½ x 3½ in. (8.6 x 8.5 cm.)

8.6 x 8.5 cm.

W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, 1981, V, no. 1057x (as Arent de Gelder).

Arthur Pond (circa 1705-1758) (without his mark). Richard Houlditch, Junior (died 1760) (L.2214), with his number and inscription '13' and 'H', and with his further inscriptions 'Rembrandt' (on the mount) and 'given me by Mr Pond' (verso). The Rev. R.C. Marshall; Sotheby's, London, 21 October 1963, lot 131, illustrated (as Rembrandt). Carl Robert Rudolf (circa 1884-1974) (L. 2811b); Sotheby's Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 18 April 1977, lot 49 (as Follower of Rembrandt).

Probably datable to around 1639-40. In the 1963 catalogue, the present drawing was compared to a study formerly in the collection of E. Wauters (O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London, 1973, II, no. 386, fig. 465). Sumowski argued in 1981 that the drawing was in fact by Arent de Gelder, drawing stylistic comparisons with two sheets of studies in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (Sumowski, op. cit., nos. 1053x and 1058x) and also with the Oriental seated, which was in the Woodner Collection (Sumowski, op. cit., no. 1055x). He also noted the presence of the inscription 't/' at the upper right corner of the sheet, which also appears on other drawings by followers of Rembrandt, such as Abraham Furnerius's Idealized mountain landscape with arched bridge in the British Museum, London (Sumowski, op. cit., no. 1013xx). This appears to be a collector's notation, although the identity of that collector has not yet been established; Sumowski notes that it is not the monogram of Rembrandt's son Titus van Rijn (1641-1668), as was once erroneously believed.