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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2008.254
People
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Dutch (Dordrecht, Netherlands 1627 - 1678 Dordrecht, Netherlands)
Title
Elisha and the Shunammite Woman
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
c. 1650
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/212651

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Brown ink, brown wash and red chalk on cream antique laid paper, framing line in gray or black ink
Dimensions
19.1 x 19.7 cm (7 1/2 x 7 3/4 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: lower right, brown ink: S v Hoogstraten
  • inscription: verso, lower left, graphite: A5559
  • watermark: fragment of a foolscap with five-pointed collar
  • inscription: verso, lower left, graphite: ä
  • inscription: verso, lower right, graphite: Hartzen April 1844
  • inscription: verso, lower right, graphite: 7 [? 27]
  • inscription: verso, lower center, graphite: 12
  • collector's mark: verso, lower left, blue ink stamp: L. 3306, (Maida and George Abrams)
  • inscription: former mount, lower center, graphite: Coll [underlined] . R. Van Liphart / R. P. Goldschmidt. sale 1915 / L180. See Lugt.
  • inscription: former mount, lower left, graphite: Exh. [underlined] R. A. 1953 / Arts Council 1962
  • inscription: former mount, verso, upper left, graphite: 16 x 22
  • inscription: former mount, verso, upper center, graphite: 31
  • inscription: former mount, verso, center, graphite: 103 [encircled] / 104 [encircled and crossed out]
  • inscription: former mount, verso, center, graphite: Hagar's Farewell / by S. van Hoogstraten / (R. van Liphart v R. P. Goldschmidt Collection).
  • inscription: former mount, verso, lower right, black and gray ink: 379 / 712 [crossed out] / 120 [encircled and crossed out]
  • inscription: verso, lower center, graphite: No 12 - -
  • collector's mark: verso, lower left, black ink stamp: L. 2811b (Carl Robert Rudolf)
  • collector's mark: verso, upper right, purple ink stamp: L. 1758 (Reinhold von Liphart)
  • inscription: verso, upper right, gray ink: 50. [upside down]
  • collector's mark: verso, lower left, black ink stamp: L. 2926 (Rudolf Philip Goldschmidt)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Possibly Georg Ernst Harzen, Hamburg.] Freiherr Reinhold von Liphart, Rathshof, Russia (L. 1758, verso, upper right), sold; [C. G. Boerner, Leipzig, 26 April 1898, lot 479]. Rudolf Philip Goldschmidt, Berlin (L. 2926, verso, lower left) sold; [Prestel, Frankfurt, 4 October 1917, lot 279, repr. pl. 73.] [Gustav Nebehay Gallery, Berlin] sold; to [P. & D. Colnaghi, London, 17 October 1929] sold; to Carl Robert Rudolf, London, 30 April 1934 (L. 2811b, verso, lower left), sold; via E. Jacobs, London, to Maida and George Abrams, Boston, 1975 (L. 3306, verso, lower left); The Maida and George Abrams Collection, 2008.254.

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. 48 by William W. Robinson:

A successful painter of portraits, biblical subjects, genre scenes, and trompe l’oeil illusions, Samuel van Hoogstraten was also a man of letters and the only Rembrandt pupil who wrote extensively about art. In 1678, the year of his death, he published the theoretical and practical treatise Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: Anders de zichtbaere werelt (Introduction to the Academy of Painting, or the Visible World).1 He began his training in Dordrecht with his father, the painter Dirk van Hoogstraten. When Samuel was about thirteen years of age, Dirk died, and “the ingenious Rembrandt” became his second master.2 The dates of his stay in Rembrandt’s workshop are not documented, but he must have arrived in Amsterdam after October 1641 and returned to Dordrecht by January 1648.3

Van Hoogstraten’s oeuvre of about 150 drawings includes a wide spectrum of subjects and types: biblical and mythological narratives, genre scenes, portraits, nudes, and sheets of studies.4 Most date from the 1640s and early 1650s. While Rembrandt’s pupil, he produced a group of elaborately pictorial compositions that attest to his originality as a draftsman and ambition as an illustrator of Old and New Testament histories (Fig. 1).5

The subject of the Harvard drawing is from the Second Book of Kings.6 A woman of Shunam and her husband offered food and shelter to the prophet Elisha. In return, he promised that the childless woman would give birth to a son. A boy was born and he grew, but suddenly died. The woman saddled an ass, summoned a servant, and hastened to Elisha. Van Hoogstraten illustrated their meeting on Mount Carmel. When she approached the prophet, his servant Gehazi “came near to thrust her away. And the man of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the Lord hath hid it from me and hath not told me” (II Kings 4:27). Elisha then returned with the Shunammite to her home and restored her son to life.

Elisha and the Shunammite Woman dates from about 1650, when Van Hoogstraten worked as an independent master in Dordrecht before embarking in 1651 on a journey to Central Europe and Italy. Its technique—disciplined contours, neat parallel and zigzag hatchings, and consistent lighting punctuated by a few darker shadows brushed in with wash—can be compared with that of drawings dated 1649 and 1650 (Fig. 2).7 The Harvard work bears the artist’s autograph signature, which appears in the same form on several other compositions of the 1640s and early 1650s (see Figs. 1, 2).8 The few strokes of red chalk on the woman’s robe and Gehazi’s head serve no evident design function, but add accents of color to the otherwise monochromatic image. Small, seemingly incidental passages of red chalk play a similar role in other early drawings by Van Hoogstraten.9

Notes

1 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: Anders de zichtbaere werelt (Rotterdam, 1678). See Michiel Roscam Ebbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten 1627–1678: Eigentijdse bronnen en oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen (Leiden, 1993), pp. 83–87, for a bibliography of Van Hoogstraten’s literary works.

2 “den verzierlijken Rembrant, nae de dood van mijn Vader Theodoor mijn tweede Meester,” Van Hoogstraten, p. 257.

3 Dirk died in December 1640, but Samuel evidently did not continue his training with Rembrandt immediately after his father’s death. He signed a will in Dordrecht in October 1641, and etchings by him appear in a book published in Dordrecht in 1642. Two painted self-portraits dated 1644 are his earliest documented Rembrandtesque works (Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt‑Schüler in vier Bänden, Landau, Germany, 1983, vol. 2, p. 1286, and cats. 847 and 849, pp. 1295–96). A signed drawing of circa 1642–44, also apparently a self-portrait, was sold at Beaussant Lefèvre, Paris, 1 December 2010, lot 7, purchased by Bob P. Haboldt, and acquired from him by the Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris. See Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, Chicago, 1995, pp. 24–25 and 273 (n. 28), and Roscam Ebbing, pp. 9–15 and 32–36, for Van Hoogstraten’s biography and the dates of his training in Rembrandt’s workshop.

4 Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School (New York, 1979), vol. 5, cats. 1100–1276axx, pp. 2451–829.

5 Ibid., cats. 1101–7, 1121x–31x, and William Robinson, “‘. . . As if one were painting with colors’: Samuel van Hoogstraten and the Pictorial Drawing,” Master Drawings, vol. 49, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 389–400, pp. 389–400. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Balaam Blessing the Israelites (Fig. 1). London, British Museum, 1895,0915.1175. Brown ink, gray wash, red chalk, black chalk, a touch of ocher chalk (applied wet?) on left leg of man second from left, touches of white opaque watercolor. Signed, lower right, brown ink, S v Hoogstraten fecit. 1646. 174 × 309 mm. Martin Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and His School in the British Museum, (London, 2010), Hoogstraten, no. 1; Robinson, pp. 389–91 and 395–96.

6 The subject was misinterpreted as Abraham Casting out Hagar and Ishmael until correctly identified by Hamann (Richard Hamann, “Hagars Abschied bei Rembrandt und im Rembrandt‑Kreise,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 8–9, 1936: 471–578a, p. 498).

7 Sumowski (1979), vol. 5, cats. 1108 (dated 1649) and 1111–13 (all three dated 1650). Samuel van Hoogstraten, Market Scene with Two Women Quarreling (Fig. 2). Brown ink, brown wash. 200 × 147 mm. Signed and dated S v Hoogstraten 1650. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-T-1958-2. Idem, cat. 1111.

8 Ibid., cats. 1101–4, 1106, 1108–9, 1111–14, and 1117.

9 For example, see Van Hoogstraten’s Adoration of the Shepherds, William Robinson 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), cat. 22.2, and Annemarie Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen 1450–1850: Kupferstichkabinett der Hamburger Kunsthalle (Cologne, 2011), vol. 1, cat. 455, pp. 285–86, repr. vol. 3, p. 455, fig. 455.

Figures

Fig. 1 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Balaam Blessing the Israelites

Fig. 2 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Market Scene with Two Women Quarreling

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Accession Year
2008
Object Number
2008.254
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Die Zeichnung, auct. cat., Gustav Nebehay Gallery (Berlin, undated), cat. no. 62, n.p., repr.
  • Frits Lugt, Les Marques de Collections de Dessins et d'Estampes. Marques estampillées et écrites de collections particulières et publiques. . . ., Vereenigde Drukkerijen (Amsterdam, 1921), under no. 2926, p. 540
  • T. W. Earp, "Drawings by Old Dutch Masters", Apollo (1930), vol. XI, no. 66, pp. 423-27, p. 424
  • Exhibition of Drawings by the Old Dutch Masters, auct. cat., P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd. (London, 1930), cat. no. 31, n.p.
  • Richard Hamann, "Hagars Abschied bei Rembrandt und im Rembrandt-Kreise", Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (1936), vol. 8-9, pp. 471-578a, p. 498, repr. fig. 38
  • Andor Pigler, Barockthemen, Akadémiai Kiadó (Budapest, 1956), vol. 1, p. 180
  • 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. 103, p. 21
  • Andor Pigler, Barockthemen: Eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, zweite Erweiterte Auflage, Akadémiai Kiadó (Budapest, 1974), vol. 1, p. 182
  • Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. Walter Strauss, Abaris Books (New York, NY, 1979), vol. 5, cat. no. 1115, pp. 2482-83, repr., and under cat. no. 1116, p. 2484
  • 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. 46, pp. 110-111, repr.
  • William W. Robinson, “’…As if one were painting with colors’: Samuel van Hoogstraten and the Pictorial Drawing”, Master Drawings (2011), vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 389-400, p. 398 (n. 9)
  • 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. 38, pp. 114-5, repr., and under cat. no. 39, p. 116
  • 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. 460, p. 289 (n. 3)
  • 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. 20; cat. no. 48, pp. 170-172, repr. p. 171

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
  • 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
  • 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

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