Young Lion Restingca. 1638–42

Rembrandt van Rijn
(Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam)

black chalk, white chalk heightening, and graywash, on brown laid paper
11.5 x 15 cm
RR-100How To Cite
Schatborn, Peter. "Young Lion Resting." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
Page 2 of 8Young Lion Resting belongs to a group of three powerful drawings of theComparative Figures

same beast closely related in style and technique that Rembrandt van Rijn
executed in the late 1630s. The other two drawings of this lion are in theBritish Museum (fig 1) and (fig 2).[1] In both of those drawings Rembrandt
depicted the lion from the side, whereas he drew Young Lion Resting inthree-quarter profile.[2] In each of these drawings Rembrandt carefully
worked up the head of the young lion in a similar manner, and in each hecaptured a sense of the animal’s inner life by accentuating the eyes withfirm strokes. He also discretely applied gray washes to draw the viewer’s
attention to the beast’s head and forequarters. Slight differences among
these drawings, however, do exist. Rembrandt rendered the bodies of theFig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, A
Lioness Devouring a Bird, Lying
Down with Her Head to the Left,ca. 1637, charcoal with gray washheightened with white on paperprepared with brown wash, 126 x
239 mm, British Museum,London, inv. no. Oo, 9.71, ©
Trustees of the British Museum

London lions in graceful, evocative lines, whereas in the Leiden Collection
drawing contour lines give the animal its final form. The master usedsimilar lines to alter the position of the forepaws.
Despite their remarkably similar appearance, Rembrandt may have usedsomewhat different materials to make these drawings. Marjorie Shelley,
paper conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has
determined that for Young Lion Resting Rembrandt used black chalkmodified with oil or black chalk with a high clay content, as well as white
chalk and gray wash applied with the brush.[3] Martin Royalton-Kisch has
concluded that Rembrandt drew the lions in the British Museum withcharcoal and gray wash,[4] while Jeroen Giltaij believes he used blackFig 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, A
Chained Lioness, Lying on theGround in Profile to the Right, ca.
1637, charcoal and gray wash
touched with white oil paint on
paper prepared with brown wash,
125 x 180 mm, British Museum,London, inv. no. Oo, 9.75, ©
Trustees of the British Museum

chalk.[5]North African lions were brought on ships of the Dutch East India
Company to the Netherlands, where they were kept in menageries andshown at fairs.[6] Among the various animals Rembrandt drew, lions
intrigued him the most. In addition to his drawings of otheranimals—including

horses,[7]elephants,[8]pigs,[9]andbirdsofparadise[10]—six autograph drawings of lions are known, including one at
the Louvre (fig 3) and the aforementioned two at the British
Museum.[11] He drew these animals to acquaint himself with theirFig 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, Studyof a Lion at Rest, ca. 1640, penand brown ink and wash onpaper, 13.8 x 20.7 cm, Museé deLouvre, Paris, © RMN-GrandPalais / Art Resource, NYappearance and character, so that later on he could portray them from theimagination. For example, he included an elephant in the background of anetching of Adam and Eve, 1638,[12] after having drawn the animal from life
a couple of times the previous year. Rembrandt’s representations of Saint
Jerome in the wilderness always contain a lion, but the animal in hisetching of 1634[13] is vastly different in appearance from the lion he© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
Page 3 of 8

depicted in these drawings, which date a few years later. This difference inportrayal before and after Rembrandt had seen actual lions emerges
clearly in the etching Saint Jerome in an Italianate Landscape of ca.
1653.[14]Rembrandt’s drawings of lions also served as examples for his pupils. Not
surprisingly, drawings of lions by pupils and followers of Rembrandt havesometimes been wrongly attributed to the master himself.[15] Constantijn
van Renesse (1626–80), a pupil of Rembrandt around 1650, made adrawing with lions based on those drawn by his teacher in a portrayal ofDaniel in the Lions’ Den.[16]Young Lion Resting and the two London drawings are usually connectedwith Rembrandt’s grisaille in Rotterdam, The Unity of the Country .[17] In
this detailed composition, a chained lioness lies below the coat of arms ofthe city of Amsterdam. This design for a political print has been given
dates that range from ca. 1637 to 1642.[18] The inscribed date on thepainting—164.—indicates that Rembrandt finished it in the 1640s, though
it is impossible to be more precise because the last digit is no longervisible. Dendrochronological examination has shown that the painting is
executed on a panel from the same tree as the support of a painting inWashington D.C., Portrait of a Polish Nobleman , dated 1637.[19] It is
possible that these three drawings inspired Rembrandt’s depiction of thelion in the Rotterdam painting, which would suggest a date for the threedrawings of about 1637.[20]Drawings of animals were listed separately in Rembrandt’s inventory of1656: “A ditto [art book] full of drawings by Rembrandt, consisting ofanimals [drawn] from life.”[21] The art dealer Jan Pietersz Zomer(1641–1724) owned 19 drawings of lions by Rembrandt that wererecorded in the catalogue of his collection compiled in about
1722.[22] Rembrandt’s Recueil de Lions, engraved by Bernard Picart(1673–1733) and published in Amsterdam in 1729, contained eighteen
lions—perhaps the same as those published by Zomer. The two previously
mentioned drawings in London both figure (in reverse) in Picart’s lion
series.[24] The 1800 sale catalogue of the collection of Cornelis Ploos vanAmstel (1726–98) also lists 14 lions.[25] Drawings of lions were
exceptionally popular, as is evident from the numerous copies made afterthem.
© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
Page 4 of 8-Peter Schatborn© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
Page 5 of 8Endnotes
1. Although the lion in this drawing has been described as the same animal as the one in theBritish Museum sheets, Luke Hunter, President of Panthera, has suggested that this is amale cub, rather than a lioness. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. EvaBenesch, 6 vols. (London and New York, 1973), 3: no. 474, figs. 974 and 475, fig. 978;Martin Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and His School in the British
Museum (Online cat. London, British Museum, 2010), nos. 29 and 30 (ca. 1638–42).
2. It is unclear whether she holds captured prey between her paws, as she does in one of theLondon sheets.
3. See Technical Summary.
4. Martin Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and His School in the BritishMuseum (Online cat. London, British Museum, 2010), nos. 29 and 30.
5. Jeroen Giltaij, “Review of Martin Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Circle inthe British Museum, London, 1991,” Simiolus 23 (1995): 98.
6. A drawing of 1653 by Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) in the J. Paul Getty Museum depicts alarge tent, pitched just outside a village, with a sign depicting an elephant. Lions were nodoubt presented to the public in the same way. See George R. Goldner,European Drawings
I: Catalogue of the Collections (Malibu, 1988), 244–45, no. 108 (A Village Festival withMusicians Playing outside a Tent, 1653, black chalk and gray wash, 17.0 x 27.7 cm.).
7. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 2: no. 461, fig. 549; Martin Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings byRembrandt and His School in the British Museum (Online cat. London, British Museum,2010), no. 73, inv. Ff,4.121.
8. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 2: nos. 457, 458, and 459, figs. 546, 548, and 549.
9. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 4: nos. 777, 778, and 779, figs. 980, 981, and 982.
10. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 2: 456, fig. 544.
11. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 3: no. 474, fig. 974, and no. 475, fig. 978; 5: no. 1211, fig. 1511, no. 1214, fig.
1514, and no. 1246, fig. 1516.
12. Adam and Eve, 1638, etching, 162 x 116 mm (Bartsch 28).
13. Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, 1634, etching, 119 x 105 mm (Bartsch 100).

© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
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14. Saint Jerome in an Italianate Landscape, ca. 1653, etching, 259 x 210 mm (Bartsch 104).
15. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London and NewYork, 1973), 4: no. 776, fig. 975; no. 781, fig. 976; no. 782, fig. 977; no. 979, fig. 783.
16. Daniel in the Lions’ Den , 1649–52, black chalk, pen, and brown ink, brush and brown wash,heightened with white, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. MB 200. WernerSumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols. (New York, 1979–92), 9: no. 2145.
17. The Unity of the Country , oil on panel, 74.6 x 101 mm, signed lower right: Rembrandt 164.
(last digit missing), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. 1717.
18. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol.
3, 1635–1642, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and London, 1989), A 135: late1630s, signed in the 1640s; Jeroen Giltaij, Guido Jansen, and Josua Bruyn,Een gloeiend
palet: Schilderijen van Rembrandt en zijn School, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen(Rotterdam, 1988), ca. 1638, early 1640s; Ernst van de Wetering,Rembrandt: A Life in 180
Paintings (Amsterdam, 2008), ca. 1637.
19. Portrait of a Polish Nobleman , 1637, oil on panel, 97 x 66 cm, signed and dated at upper
right: Rembrandt ft./1637, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1937.1.78. See Arthur
K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (New York and Oxford, 1995),
222–26, repro. A River Landscape with a Windmill in Kassel is painted on the same piece ofwood (oil on panel, 67 x 87.5 cm, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe,Kassel, inv. GK 242). Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of
Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 3, 1635–1642, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, andLondon, 1989), B 12. This painting was executed in two stages, first in a Rembrandtesquestyle in around 1640, possibly by Rembrandt himself, and then overpainted about 1650–55,probably by Ferdinand Bol.
20. The lioness sheets would therefore date to around same time as the black chalk drawing ofan elephant in Vienna, dated 1637. Black chalk, 233 x 354 mm, Albertina, Vienna, inv.
17558. Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, ed. Eva Benesch, 6 vols. (London andNew York, 1973), 2: no. 457, fig. 546.
21. Walter L. Strauss, and Marion van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents (New York,1979), 1656/12, no. 249.
22. Peter Schatborn, “Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen vanRembrandt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981): 21–24.
23. Peter Schatborn, “Van Rembrandt tot Crozat. Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen vanRembrandt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), 25–28.
24. Bernard Picart, Recueil de Lions (Amsterdam, 1729), nos. F 5 and F 6.
25. Sale, Amsterdam, 3 May 1800, VV, nos. 32–45. The four drawings from this group that havebeen accepted as the work of Rembrandt do not correspond to the drawings used by Picart.
© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Lion Resting
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See Peter Schatborn, “Van Rembrandt tot Crozat: Vroege verzamelingen met tekeningen
van Rembrandt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981): 28.

ProvenanceJean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810), France.1[1]Robert Lebel (1901–86), Paris, by 1968. 2[2][Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London/New York, together with Artemis Fine Art, London/New
York, 2000; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London/New York, 2005; Otto Naumann Ltd., New York,2005].
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Provenance Notes

1. Based on the RKD photo archive mount, not currently available online. Frenchdraughtsman and engraver Jean-Jacques de Boissieu collected works on paper byRembrandt and other seventeenth-century Dutch artists and referenced them in his own
artwork.
2. Based on the RKD photo archive mount, not currently available online. Lebel was also amajor collector of Dutch drawings.

Exhibition History
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, 2006 [lent by
the present owner].
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, “Drawing Life: The Dutch Visual Tradition,” 24November 2009–28 February 2010, no. 7 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch
Painting from The Leiden Collection,” January–May 2015 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,”© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Young Lion Resting
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22 February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Slive, Seymour. The Drawings of Rembrandt: A New Study. London, 2009, 124, 235 n. 52.
Schatborn, Peter. Rembrandt and His Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection . Paris,
2010, 88, 89 n. 9.
Royalton-Kisch, Martin. Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and His School in the British
Museum. Online cat. London, British Museum, 2010, no. 29, n. 4.

Technical Summary
The support, a sheet of brown laid paper, has been hinged to a decorated historic mount with its
outer margins trimmed. The support has been laid down, and small areas extend beyond themount edges. Although the mount does not bear any collector’s marks, it appears the drawing
was once adhered to it. Layers of paper from an earlier mounting are present along the corners,
and a layer of modern laid paper adhered to the central area serves as a barrier between thedrawing and the mount.
The drawing is executed in a rich black chalk with white chalk heightening. Under magnification,
the black chalk appears to have been enriched with a liquid, possibly a gum, which increased its
viscosity and enhanced it blackness. Some strokes and marks have a slightly lustrous quality,
whereas others have a drier, matte quality.
The drawing is unsigned and undated.
The drawing has not undergone conservation treatment since acquisition and remains in an
excellent state of preservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Entry based on 2009 examination report by Marjorie Shelley, Sherman FairchildConservator in Charge, Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and PhotographConservation, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection