Healing of the Sick
Arent de Gelder(Dordrecht 1645 – 1727 Dordrecht)

ca. 1722–25
oil on panel
40.6 x 56.8 cm
signed twice, upper left and lower right: “A deGelder f”
AG-106

How to cite
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “Healing of the Sick” (2022). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived
December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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The raw portrayal of human suffering and despair in this powerful and enigmaticComparative Figures

painting stands apart from Arent de Gelder’s many other biblical and mythologicalscenes. One finds in this work no semblance of the exotic figures, often turbaned andwearing ermine cloaks or other costly garments evoking a distant world, both
geographically and temporally, that De Gelder generally included in his paintings.[1]Equally absent are De Gelder’s other familiar symbols of power and wealth, including
golden scepters, expensive lace, feathers, and strands of pearls. Instead, this roughly
executed and broadly brushed painting features the poor, dressed in simple unadorned
clothes, who have come to the edge of a pool of water in hopes that its restorative
powers will cure those among them who are sick or disabled.

Fig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ
Preaching (The Hundred Guilder
Print), ca. 1648, etching, drypoint, andengraving on Japanese paper, 280 x
394 mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
inv. no. RP-P-OB-602.

The painting’s thematic core revolves around a group of men searching for that cure.
Among them are a man who has been transported to this location in a simple wooden
cart and his two companions who have carried him to the water. As the suffering manlies on his back, he rests one hand on his bare chest while clutching the cloak of the
man to his right, a gesture that poignantly expresses both his desperation and his
dependence on others. The companion at his left twists his face upward with eyes
closed, as though in supplication or prayer that his friend’s ailments will be cured.
Two large men, with their backs to the viewer, dominate the foreground. One of themvigorously pulls on tautly stretched ropes attached to the cart, while the other, on
crutches, approaches the rippling pool of water from the right with fierce
determination. Their anonymity is symptomatic of the universality of their plight. De
Gelder has apparently portrayed neither a particular moment in human history nor a
specific narrative from the Bible or mythology. Instead, his painting is a broader
commentary on the tribulations of those experiencing illness or injury, the importanceof caring for others, and the healing power of hope and faith.
De Gelder contrasts the varied reactions of witnesses to these events. Two men, dimly

Fig 2. Arent de Gelder, Self-Portrait
with Etching by Rembrandt (Portrait ofa Collector?), after 1685, oil oncanvas, 79.5 x 64.5 cm, St. Petersburg,
State Hermitage Museum, inv. no.
ГЭ-790, image is used fromwww.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesyof the State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg, Russia.

lit and barely visible at the far left, stand aside without any evident response to what
they see, representing the broad swaths of society that remain indifferent to thedifficulties faced by people experiencing illness. Others, however, do care, as seen in
the prominent family group situated just behind the wooden cart—distinguishedthrough light, color, and brushwork. The husband’s animated gestures, outstretchedarms, and facial expression are particularly compelling as he shares his concerns withhis wife, who listens intently while holding her child close to her body. Her elaborate
headdress, surmounted by lace and decorated with jewels, indicates that the family
belongs to a different social and economic stratum than the pilgrims who have cometo these healing waters.
Much uncertainty has existed about the theme of De Gelder’s painting since it was

Fig 3. Arent de Gelder, Portrait ofHerman Boerhaave (1668–1738),© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
Page 3 of 12

first shown to the public in 1965 in the exhibition Arm in de Gouden Eeuw (Poor in
the Golden Age),[2] where it was simply titled Unknown Scene. During the exhibition,

1722, oil on canvas, 79.2 x 63.5 cm,
Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 757,
© Mauritshuis, The Hague.

Pieter van Thiel and Ingrid van Gelder-Jost proposed that De Gelder had depicted the
Pool of Bethesda and related the painting to an episode in the life of Christ that isrecounted in the Gospel of St. John:
Now in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool which in Hebrew is called
Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these porticoes lay a multitude of those who
were sick, blind, limping, or paralyzed. Now a man was there who had been ill
for thirty-eight years. Jesus, upon seeing this man lying there and knowing that
he had already been in that condition for a long time, said to him, “Do you wantFig 4. Richard L. Feigen in his
penthouse in New York City (with De
Gelder’s Healing of the Sick hanging
behind him). Photo courtesy of
Isabelle Harnoncourt.

to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into thepool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down
before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.[3]In the catalogue for the 1968 exhibition Rondom Rembrandt, Maarten Wurfbain
rejected the proposal that De Gelder’s painting was connected to the biblical narrativein John 5, since Christ does not appear in the painting.[4] Wurfbain gave the painting amore generic title, De genezing van de zieken (The Healing of the Sick), and plausibly
suggested that it was identical to a work listed in De Gelder’s inventory of 1727: “1

Fig 5. Arent de Gelder, Christ on the
Mount of Olives, ca. 1715, oil on
panel, 36.8 x 42.5 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
AG-105.

stuk verbeeldende de genesingh der kranken” (1 piece representing the healing of thesick) in the “kamer agter ‘t voorsalet” (room behind the front room).[5] In his 1969dissertation on the artist, David van Fossen accepted Wurfbain’s proposal, noting thatthe painting was not a fragment of a larger composition, since it was signed twice,once in the upper left and again in the lower right.[6] These arguments persuaded
Werner Sumowski that the painting was a genre scene. In 1983, he wrote that if thepainting were connected to the biblical account in John 5, then “the helpless man who
had been hoping for a cure for thirty-eight years should be depicted . . . above all,Christ is missing as a miracle worker.” He viewed the motif of the sick person being
submerged in the water by two men as being “only an incidental motif.” Nevertheless,
Sumowski left open the possibility that the painting was a “preliminary work for areligious subject.”[7]In 1994, J.W. von Moltke, in his monograph on the artist, returned to the idea that De
Gelder had represented the biblical narrative. He proposed, however, that the artist
had chosen to portray a moment “before Christ appears to heal the sick man.”Somewhat confusingly, Von Moltke gave the painting the title Healing of the Sick in
his catalogue but noted in his commentary that he believed it represented the “Healing© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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by the Pool of Bethesda.”[8] In his entry on the painting in the catalogue for the
1998–99 Arent de Gelder exhibition, where the painting was titled De zieken bij het
bad van Bethesda (The Sick by the Pool at Bethesda), Guus Sluiter agreed with Von
Moltke’s view that De Gelder had portrayed a moment before Christ healed the sickman. He also argued that the vaguely rendered column behind the family group was
one of the five halls at the pool at Bethesda.[9] Sluiter noted that, aside from De
Gelder, the only Dutch painter who did not depict Christ’s miracle in representationsof the healing of the sick at Bethesda was Joost Droochsloot (1586–1666). He
included, instead, the moment in which an angel appears to stir the waters, cited insome late manuscripts of John’s Gospel: “for an angel of the Lord went down atcertain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first stepped inafter the stirring up of the water was made well from whatever disease with which he
was afflicted.”[10]Arent de Gelder was an upstanding and righteous man, who, according to Arnold
Houbraken, frequently attended church in the latter part of his life.[11] Not only did
De Gelder have an extensive knowledge of the Bible, but he was also one of the greatinterpreters of stories from the Old and New Testament and the Apocrypha. It istherefore remarkable that so much uncertainty exists about the theme of this painting,but it seems probable that De Gelder drew inspiration from the vivid imagery in John
5:3, which describes the “multitude of those who were sick, blind, limping, orparalyzed” who had come to the pool at Bethesda “waiting for the moving of thewaters.”[12] De Gelder’s rendering of this scene is so different from John’s accountthat one surmises he had a different thematic concept in mind, emphasizing the roleof human caring, together with faith in divine intervention, in healing.[13]Throughout his career, De Gelder was greatly inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–69), with whom he studied in the early 1660s. Houbraken, who, like De
Gelder, was also from Dordrecht and was acquainted with his “fellow townsman,”wrote that “Rembrandt’s way of painting . . . came to [De Gelder] so naturally andsuccessfully that . . . [no one else] approached Rembrandt as closely in that manner ofpainting. In addition, it is remarkable that he alone amongst such a large number wholater abandoned that way of painting, stayed with it.”[14] Documentary evidence
suggests that De Gelder could follow in Rembrandt’s manner because he was notbeholden to the changing character of the art market for his financial well-being. He
never married, and he inherited a large sum of money when his father died in 1698.
The extensive inventory taken after his death in 1727 lists about 200 paintings,
including 70 of his own works, mostly biblical scenes. Likely among them, as
mentioned above, was Healing of the Sick.[15]Houbraken’s characterization of De Gelder, as a close follower of Rembrandt who© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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continued to work in the master’s style when it was no longer in fashion, has largely
obscured the fact that De Gelder developed a distinctive manner of painting thatdiffered in many ways from that of his teacher. De Gelder’s primary contact with
Rembrandt in the early 1660s occurred at a time when the latter was creating
masterpieces with large-scale figures placed close to the foreground, such as his SelfPortrait, ca. 1663, in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne; or his Homer, 1663, inthe Mauritshuis, The Hague. De Gelder initially emulated the bold brushwork anddeep, rich colors, particularly reds and blacks, found in such works. However, his
touch was never as sure as that of Rembrandt, and he used multiple dabs of paintrather than firm strokes to model his forms. By the 1690s, his palette, both in his
biblical scenes and portraits, tended toward lighter tonalities, including pink, orange,
and velvet hues. He generally applied his paints more thinly and fluidly than did
Rembrandt, and in multiple layers. Strikingly, De Gelder used a palette knife to a far
greater extent than his master, both to model his forms and to define decorative
elements in the fanciful costumes he depicted in his paintings.
While these characteristics are typical of De Gelder’s painting style throughout his
career, his Healing of the Sick seems quite different from his other mature works,
including its use of a panel support.[16] It seems likely that he executed this painting
very late in his career, probably around 1720. Instead of using thinly applied layers
and lighter tonalities and extensively deploying the palette knife, De Gelder createdthis somber image with dense, dark paints. As in the expressive face and hands of theman speaking at the left and the upturned face of the man supporting the prostrate
figure lying in the water, De Gelder applied thick dabs of paint, layered on top of one
another, to model these rough and splotchy figures. Equally distinctive is his handlingof the setting, which De Gelder indicated with broad paint strokes but left largely
undefined. One wonders, for example, if the occasional dabs of orange in the dark
background are meant to suggest distant figures standing on a hillside or somearchitectural structure. De Gelder’s composition is also unusual, as though the subject
presented a new pictorial challenge that demanded a different approach. He generally
conceived his biblical narratives in one of two ways: most of his Old Testamentscenes focus on the emotional and physical relationships of only a few individuals, as,for example, in The Leiden Collection’s Judah and Tamar; in his New Testament
subjects, he generally portrayed more expansive narratives with multiple figures in a
spacious setting, as with The Leiden Collection’s Christ on the Mount of Olives.
Healing of the Sick falls somewhere in between these two parameters.
As Rembrandt never depicted this subject, De Gelder’s interpretation is distinctly his
own. Nevertheless, in his search for a pictorial prototype for his rendering of the sickand disabled individuals in search of healing, De Gelder turned, as he often did, to
one of Rembrandt’s prints—in this instance the master’s Hundred Guilder Print (fig 1© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
Page 6 of 12). Among the supplicants in this iconic image of Christ preaching was a sick man
lying on a wooden cart, a motif that must have inspired De Gelder to depict a
recumbent figure who had been transported to the healing waters by similar means.
Like Rembrandt, De Gelder also included a man walking with the aid of a staff. De
Gelder knew Rembrandt’s print well, and he even portrayed a collector holding an
impression of The Hundred Guilder Print (fig 2).[17]Healing of the Sick is unlike De Gelder’s typical depictions of biblical narratives. Hispaintings generally feature elegantly robed and coiffed figures and rarely, if ever, thepoor and the downtrodden. One wonders if some special circumstance in De Gelder’slife, or among his acquaintances, might account for the distinctive character of thisscene. One possibility relates to his friendship with the famed physician and professor
at the University of Leiden Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), whom De Gelder
portrayed in 1722 (fig 3). The portrait shows the physician, dressed informally, as
though speaking and gesturing to the viewer. Just how he and De Gelder came toknow each other is uncertain. But the character of this image—as well as the fact that
Boerhaave and his descendants owned several paintings by the Dordrecht master,
including a family portrait of Boerhaave with his wife and daughter—suggests that apersonal relationship existed between them beyond the famed doctor’s evident
admiration for De Gelder’s style of painting and his abilities as a portraitist.[18]Boerhaave, like De Gelder, was an upright citizen and devout individual who fusedhis career with his strong Calvinist beliefs. Boerhaave’s father was a minister, andBoerhaave had planned a life in ministry before he decided to devote himself to
medicine.[19] Just as Houbraken commented on De Gelder’s faith, so too did
Boerhaave’s biographer Samuel Johnson:
Boerhaave asserted on all occasions the divine authority, and sacred efficacy, ofthe Holy Scriptures; and maintained that by them alone was taught the way ofsalvation, and that they only could give peace of mind. The excellency of theChristian religion was the frequent subject of his conversation. A strictobedience to the doctrine, and a diligent imitation of the example, of our Blessed
Saviour, he often declared to be the foundation of true tranquility.[20]Johnson also writes movingly about an extremely difficult period in Boerhaave’s lifethat may be relevant to De Gelder’s painting of Healing of the Sick. In the latter halfof 1722, the very year that De Gelder painted his portrait of a vigorous andengaging Boerhaave, the famed doctor suffered an agonizing illness, then thought tobe gout, that left him close to death. Johnson writes:© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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The history of his illness can hardly be read without horror. He was for fivemonths confined to his bed, where he lay upon his back without daring toattempt the least motion, because any effort renewed his torments, which wereso exquisite, that he was at length not only deprived of motion, but of sense.
Here art was at a stand; nothing could be attempted, because nothing could be
proposed with the least prospect of success. At length having, in the sixth monthof his illness, obtained some remission, he took simple medicines in large
quantities, and at length wonderfully recovered.[21]Johnson’s description of Boerhaave lying on his back and unable to move for six
months calls to mind De Gelder’s Healing of the Sick where a sick man, carried byothers because he could not move by himself, lies prostate in healing waters. Johnson
attributes Boerhaave’s recovery to the medicines that he consumed; however, given
the power of Boerhaave’s faith, one can imagine that he was also sustained by thebiblical account of healing found in John 5. It seems possible, even probable, that
Boerhaave’s traumatic near-death experience inspired De Gelder to paint thisemotionally charged image of those hoping to be healed at the pool at Bethesda.[22]This somber and poignant scene, however, is not without hope. Through expression
and gesture, the husband and father of the family of witnesses at the upper leftconveys his conviction that healing will come, and that faith in God’s divine
providence will be rewarded.[23] The husband’s views are undoubtedly those of theartist himself, and thus one must understand that the primary audience for the man’s
passionate reaction to the scene before him is not his wife, but the viewer.[24]The prominent location in which Arent de Gelder hung Healing of the Sick, near thefront room of his house, indicates the importance he attributed to this painting andsuggests that it held personal associations. After De Gelder’s death in 1727, thepainting disappeared from view for over two and a half centuries. Healing of the Sick
only surfaced in 1965, when the Dutch collector and art dealer Daan Cevat (1913–90)
lent it to the Leiden exhibition Rondom Rembrandt. In 1973, Cevat sold his collection
at Christie’s in London (November 30, 1973, no. 69), where the American collector
and art dealer Richard L. Feigen (1930–2021) acquired it for his private collection (fig 4). Strikingly, only five months previously, Feigen had acquired De Gelder’s
Christ on the Mount of Olives (fig 5) for his private collection as well.[25]Feigen once related that he collected paintings that excited him because of the“passion of innovation, the cutting edge, the risk-taking by . . . artists that takechances.” He admired artists like De Gelder “who are not painting in their rearview
mirror, but through the windshield.”[26] Feigen and Thomas S. Kaplan, founder of The
Leiden Collection, who were close friends, shared a love and fascination for De© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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Gelder’s innovative and expressive paintings. Through the strong personal bond ofthese two collectors and their families, The Leiden Collection was able to acquire
both Christ on the Mount of Olives and Healing of the Sick from the Feigen estate in
2021. Arent de Gelder is now represented by five outstanding works in The Leiden
Collection, which makes it the largest holder of De Gelder’s paintings in the world.[27]- Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 2022

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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Endnotes
1. As evident in three of his paintings in The Leiden Collection, Judah and Tamar, Edna Entrusting Tobias
with Sarah, and Old Testament Figure, Probably King Solomon.
2. The exhibition was held at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum “de Waag.”
3. John 5:2–9 (New American Standard Bible, NASB).
4. Rondom Rembrandt: De verzameling Daan Cevat (Exh. cat., Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal)(Leiden, 1968), 11, no. 14.
5. The inventory is found in the Regionaal Archief Dordrecht, inventory of Arent de Gelder, Notarial
Archives, inv. 84, fol. 280, 29 August 1727. The inventory was published by Karl Lilienfeld, Arent deGelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst (The Hague, 1914), 277.
6. David Raymond van Fossen, “The Paintings of Aert de Gelder” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969),
238–39, no 24.
7. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 2, G. van den Eeckhout–I. de Joudreville(Landau, 1983), 1176, no. 796.
8. Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke, Arent de Gelder: Dordrecht 1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), 85–86, no.
53.
9. Guus Sluiter, in Arent de Gelder (1645–1727): Rembrandts laatste leerling, ed. Dirck Bijker (Exh. cat.
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) (Ghent, 1998), 206, notes that in
the annotations of the 1686 edition of the Statenbijbel, these halls are called “galerijen, panden, dat is /kameren / daer de siecke in waren” (galleries surrounded by pillars, which were rooms for the sick).
10. Joost Droochsloot, The Pool of Bethesda, 1640–60 (Centraal Museum, Utrecht). The passage
Droochsloot illustrates is John 5:3b–4, but this text is no longer found in the standard NASB translation.
11. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,
1718–21; rev. ed. The Hague, 1753; repr. Amsterdam, 1980), 3: 206–7. See also the entry for De
Gelder’s Christ on the Mount of Olives in this catalogue.
12. John 5:3b (NASB; no longer part of the standard translation).
13. De Gelder’s concern for helping the poor is also evident in the subject of the first painting listed in his
inventory of 1727: “1 groot stuk boven het comptoir verbeeldende de samaritaen” (1 large piece above
the bureau depicting the Samaritan [The Good Samaritan]). The painting hung in the “voorsalet” (frontroom), and hence it held pride of place in De Gelder’s home. For a transcription of this item in theinventory, see Karl Lilienfeld, Arent de Gelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst (The Hague, 1914), 275.
14. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,
1718–21; rev. ed. The Hague, 1753; repr. Amsterdam, 1980), 3: 206© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
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15. The inventory is found in the Regionaal Archief Dordrecht, inventory of Arent de Gelder, Notarial
Archives, inv. 84, fol. 280, 29 August 1727. The inventory was published by Karl Lilienfeld, Arent deGelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst (The Hague, 1914), 277.
16. De Gelder generally painted on a canvas support and did not use panel before the mid-1710s (see Christon the Mount of Olives, The Leiden Collection). The panel is quite thick, measuring along the top edge
approximately ½ inch thick. The panel has been repaired at the top right corner with an inserted narrowpiece of wood that measures 4 ¼ inches long. The top edge of the insert is 1 ½ inches from the top edgeof the panel. The inserted piece slightly tapers. It is 7/8 inch wide at the top and 1 inch wide at thebottom.
17. See Dirck Bijker, ed., Arent de Gelder (1645–1727): Rembrandts laatste leerling (Exh. cat. Dordrecht,
Dordrechts Museum; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) (Ghent, 1998), 220–22, cat. 42. Althoughsome debate exists about the collector’s identity, it is likely Jacob Moelaert (1649–1727), a friend of thepainter who had a large collection of prints and drawings, including multiple works by Rembrandt that
he bequeathed to De Gelder.
18. Karl Lilienfeld, Arent de Gelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst (The Hague, 1914), 24, speculated that De
Gelder may have traveled to Leiden to meet with Boerhaave because he was suffering from an illness.
For De Gelder’s paintings that were owned by Boerhaave’s descendants, ones that presumably had been
bequeathed to them by Boerhaave, see Ben Broos and Ariane van Suchtelen, Portraits in the Mauritshuis
1430–1790 (Zwolle, 2004), 101, 102n10. Most of these paintings were biblical subjects.
19. For the connections between Boerhaave’s Calvinist beliefs and his medical profession, see Rina Knoeff,
Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738): Calvinist Chemist and Physician, vol. 3, History of Science andScholarship in the Netherlands (Chicago, 2002).
20. Samuel Johnson, The Life of Dr. Herman Boerhaave, 53, retrieved from The Yale Digital Edition of theWorks of Samuel Johnson. Johnson, who had access to Boerhaave’s autobiographical notes as well as thefuneral oration given in 1738 by the doctor’s good friend and colleague Albert Schultens, wrote
eloquently about the importance of Christian beliefs to Boerhaave. Johnson published his Life of
Boerhaave in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 9 (1739): 37–38, 72–73, 114–16, 172–76. See also Richard R.
Reynolds, “Johnson’s ‘Life of Boerhaave’ in Perspective,” Yearbook of English Studies 5 (1975): 115–29,
https://doi.org/10.2307/3507178.
21. Samuel Johnson, The Life of Dr. Herman Boerhaave, 44, retrieved from The Yale Digital Edition of theWorks of Samuel Johnson.
22. De Gelder apparently painted this work for himself, for, as mentioned in the text above, it was listed in
the 1727 inventory of works in his possession taken after his death.
23. In this scenario, one could also imagine that the tender portrait De Gelder painted of Boerhaave, hisdaughter, and wife dates slightly later than 1722. Their linked hands and affectionate expressions
suggest they are fully aware of the importance of their familial bonds after that terribly difficult periodof their lives. For this painting in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, see Dirck Bijker, ed., Arent de Gelder© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Healing of the Sick
Page 11 of 12(1645–1727): Rembrandts laatste leerling (exh. cat. Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Cologne, WallrafRichartz-Museum) (Ghent, 1998), 253, no 57.
24. De Gelder often included observers discussing the biblical event unfolding before them to add anotherdimension to his scenes, particularly in his Passion Series that he executed late in his career. See also theentry Christ on the Mount of Olives in this catalogue.
25. Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 11 July 1973, no. 96.
26. Feigen discussed his attitudes toward collecting in 2009 in an oral history for the Archives of American
Art.
27. In addition to Christ on the Mount of Olives and Healing of the Sick, these paintings are Judah and Tamar, Edna Entrusting Tobias with Sarah, and Old Testament Figure, Probably King Solomon.

ProvenancePossibly Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht, until 1727.[1]Daan Cevat (1913–99), Amsterdam and London, by 1965.
(Sale, Christie’s, London, 30 November 1973, no. 69 [to Richard L. Feigen for $14,438].)
Richard L. Feigen (1930–2021), New York City and Chicago, 1973.[2]From whom acquired, through Sotheby’s, New York (private sale), by the present owner in 2021.

Provenance Notes

1. Regionaal Archief Dordrecht, Inventory of Arent de Gelder, Notarial Archives, Notary A. Cant, inv. 84,
fol. 278, 29 August 1727.
2. Arent de Gelder’s Christ on the Mount of Olives, now in The Leiden Collection, was also formerly in thecollection of Richard L. Feigen.

Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, “Arm in de Gouden Eeuw,” 23 October 1965–17 January
1966, no. 64 [lent by Daan Cevat].
Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, “Rondom Rembrandt: De verzameling Daan Cevat,” 11April–16 June 1968, no. 14 [lent by Daan Cevat].
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, “Arent de Gelder (1645–1727): Rembrandts laatste leerling,” 11October 1998–24 January 1999; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, 19 February–19 May 1999, no. 37© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Healing of the Sick
Page 12 of 12[lent by Richard L. Feigen].

References
Possibly Lilienfeld, Karl. Arent de Gelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst. The Hague, 1914, 277.
Amsterdams Historisch Museum. Arm in de Gouden Eeuw. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Amsterdams
Historisch Museum. Amsterdam, 1965, 28, no. 64.
Wurfbain, Maarten. Rondom Rembrandt: De verzameling Daan Cevat. Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk
Museum de Lakenhal. Leiden, 1968, 11, no. 14.
Van Fossen, David Raymond. “The Paintings of Aert de Gelder.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969,
238–39, no. 24.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Vol. 2, G. van den Eeckhout–I. de Joudreville.
Landau, 1983, 1176, no. 796.
Von Moltke, Joachim Wolfgang. Arent de Gelder: Dordrecht 1645–1727. Doornspijk, 1994, 85–86, no.
53.
Bijker, Dirk, ed. Arent de Gelder (1645–1727): Rembrandts laatste leerling. Exh. cat. Dordrecht,
Dordrechts Museum; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Gent, 1998, 206–7, no. 37.
Sluiter, Guus. “Gelder, Arent de.” In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon
Online / Artists of the World Online. Edited by Wolf Tegethoff, Bénédicte Savoy, and Andreas Beyer.
Berlin, 2009. https://www.degruyter.com/database/AKL/entry/_00187651/html.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection