Bookkeeper at His DeskJan Lievens(Leiden 1607 – 1674 Amsterdam)ca. 1627
oil on panel
89.7 x 72.7 cm
signed in dark paint, lower left corner: “L”
JL-101© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Surh, Dominique. “Bookkeeper at His Desk” (2017). 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/ (archivedDecember 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.

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Seated at his desk amidst a stack of books and notarized documents, an old man

Comparative Figures

focuses on a page propped up by a book as intense light falling from the upper left
casts a dramatic play of light and shadow over the scene. Light provides theexpressive means by which Jan Lievens has created a series of powerful opposites,
for example the brightness of the white pages of the book in the background versus
the darkness of foreground stack of books, or the radiant lemon-yellow of the sunlit
portion of the man’s cloak as opposed to the deep grays of its shaded right shoulder
and arm. Such chiaroscuro effects also play out on the man’s face, where pinkish
folds around the man’s left eye and cheek give way to deep shadows on its opposite
side. Light also accentuates the wrinkles in his forehead and picks out the long strandsof hair in his beard and mustache.
One could imagine that Constantijn Huygens had a painting such as this in mind
when, after visiting the artist’s studio in or around 1628, he praised Jan Lievens forhis audacious themes and forms and for his extraordinary ability to depict the humanFig 1. Jan Lievens, The Pen Cutter, ca.
1627, oil on canvas, 127 x 107.5 cm,
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum &Fondation Corboud, on permanentloan from Sal. Oppenheim Collection,
Inv.nr. WRM Dep. 943

face.[1] Indeed, the present work typifies Lievens’s bold handling of paint while
exemplifying his ability to capture the physical and emotional states of his subjects.
The sitter’s remarkable physiognomy is achieved through a wide variety ofbrushstrokes that define his network of wrinkles and sagging folds and frame his facewith a soft mane of tousled hair. The old man’s downcast eyes are bloodshot andbetray a lapsing focus, implying that he has spent many hours doing mental work. A
sense of elapsed time is further suggested by the position of the old man’s black cap,
which is tipped to the back of his head as though a stretch and a sigh have justtranspired, signaling the end of a full day’s work.

Fig 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, TheGoldweigher, 1627, oil on panel, 31.9
x 42.5 cm, Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Gemӓldegalerie, inv. no, 828D,© Jörg P. Anders

Huygens also remarked that the artist’s brimming self-assurance led him to work in ascale larger than life. Indeed, the present work relates to a number of other halflength single figures executed in the artist’s ambitious scale. Many of these portrayelder wise men in the guise of apostles or evangelists surrounded by tatteredmanuscripts and books, and show them reading, contemplating, or in the act ofwriting.[2] The type of books and documents on the desk and leaning against the wall,
which show numbers and canceled notations, suggests that the man in this painting isa bookkeeper or an accountant. The prominent book in the foreground containing themerchant’s mark “LI” with the numeral 4, identifies the book as a ledger.[3]This painting relates thematically and compositionally to Lievens’s The Pen Cutter,
now on loan at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum from the Sal. Oppenheim Collection (fig 1). This work similarly features a single figure seated at a desk surrounded bybooks and documents, but shows the man in the act of sharpening a quill, with an

Fig 3. Jan Lievens, A Bearded Old
Man with a Book, ca. 1626–27, chalkdrawing, 166 x 134 mm, Hessisches
Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. no.
AE 672hourglass and moneybags on his desk. This painting has generally been dated to ca.
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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1627 on the basis of its close thematic connection to Rembrandt van Rijn’s The
Goldweigher, dated 1627 (fig 2).[4] It seems probable that Bookkeeper at His Desk waspainted at approximately the same time, ca. 1627.[5]Lievens employed an expressive technique of incising into the wet paint with the backof the brush to emphasize the wiry texture of the old man’s hair. By using highlights
and lowlights that create a contrasting network of hair, Lievens evoked a sense ofdepth and movement. This technique, which Rembrandt and Lievens both used in themid- to late 1620s and which perhaps derived from their early efforts in etching, isindicative of their close collaboration and the shared continuum of their ideas.
Lievens’s treatment of the sitter’s beard in the present work is also consistent with hiswork in etching and chalk, as in his red chalk drawing in Darmstadt, A Bearded Old
Man with a Book (fig 3). The similarity of the sitter’s position with regard to theFig 4. X-radiograph of Bookkeeper atHis Desk (JL-101), upside down (withsuppressed cradle visibility)

picture plane, emphasizing the oblique angle of the man’s head and the diagonal linesin the composition, suggests the sketch may have served as an early study for thefigure in this painting.
X-radiographs reveal an earlier composition beneath this image. Oriented upside
down, it depicts a three-quarter-length portrait of a man in a hat with a lace ruff (fig 4). Dendrochronological data indicates the earliest use of the panel from 1603 onward,
leaving a period of around two decades during which the portrait could be dated.[6]The style of this underlying portrait is unlike anything Lievens is known to havepainted in his early years and must have been painted by another hand. Lievens isknown to have acquired inexpensive panels during his Leiden years, and thispreviously used panel may have been one of those.[7]- Dominique Surh, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Bookkeeper at His Desk
Page 5 of 8Endnotes
1. For a recent translation of Huygens’s account, see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch
Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee ArtMuseum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 286–87.
2. See, for example, St. Paul, St. Peter, and The Four Evangelists from ca. 1624–47, illustrated in Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National
Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (NewHaven, 2008), nos. 4, 5, 8–10.
3. Basil Yamey, “Account Book Covers in Some Vanitas Still-Life Paintings,” Journal of the Warburg andCourtauld Institutes 47 (1984): 229–31; also in Art and Accounting (New Haven and London, 1989),
108–9. One of the more common marks in the Low Countries incorporated the numeral 4 with themerchant’s initials. Although speculative, the merchant’s mark may have referenced the accounting
ledger of Lievens’s father, who earned his livelihood as a cloth merchant and embroiderer.
4. The interpretation of The Goldweigher has ranged from the portrayal of Avarice to the illustration of abiblical parable; see Bob van den Boogart, “An Old Usurer Examining a Coin,” in The Mystery of theYoung Rembrandt, ed. Bernhard Schnackenburg and and Ernst van de Wetering (Exh. cat. Kassel,
Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis) (Wolfratshausen, 2001), 210–13, no. 29.
5. Not surprisingly, Bookkeeper at His Desk was once thought to be by Rembrandt. It was first attributed toLievens by Hans Schneider, Jan Lievens, sein Leben und seine Werke (Haarlem, 1932; repr. with asupplement by Rudolf E. O Ekkart, Amsterdam, 1973), 110, 325, no. 74. Nevertheless, the painting
continued to be attributed to Rembrandt throughout the twentieth century, until a distinctive Lievensmonogram “L” at the lower left was uncovered when the painting was restored in Paris in 2003 by PierreBucat.
6. Bookkeeper at His Desk consists of three oak boards, the youngest heartwood of which was formed in1592. With the requisite years of seasoning, Peter Klein calculates the earliest possible painting date as1603, with a more likely plausibility from 1609 onward.
7. E. Melanie Gifford, “Lievens’ Technique: ‘Wonders in Smeared Paint, Varnishes, and Oils,’” in Jan
Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National
Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (NewHaven, 2008), 42–43.

Provenance© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Basil Beridge, Algarkirk Hall, Lincolnshire (his sale, London, 8 April 1911, no. 23 [£514 to Partridge,
Lewis, & Simmons, London], as by Rembrandt).
[Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris, by 1921, as by Rembrandt].
Duc de G. (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 22 May 1925, no. 11 [80,000 francs to Pinchon], as byRembrandt).
Armand Esders (his sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 28 May 1941, no. 16, as by Rembrandt [A. de Rouvre,Paris, 1947]).
Private collection, France [Salomon Lilian, B. V., Amsterdam, 2005].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Kyoto, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, “Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in theAge of Vermeer,” 25 June–16 October 2011; Miyagi, Miyagi Museum of Art, 27 October–12
December 2011; Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Art, 23 December 2011–14 March 2012, no. 23 [lentby the present owner].
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, April
2012–July 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The LeidenCollection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent by the presentowner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces ofThe Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the presentowner].

References
Valentiner,WilhelmR.

Rembrandt:WiedergefundeneGemälde(1910–1920)

in120© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Bookkeeper at His DeskPage 7 of 8Abbildungen. Stuttgart and Berlin, 1921, 26, no. 109 (as attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn).
Bredius, Abraham. “Wiedergefundene ‘Rembrandts.’” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 56, no. 32 (1921):
151, no. 109 (as most likely by Jan Lievens).
Van Dyke, John C. Rembrandt and His School: A Critical Study of the Master and His Pupils with a New
Assignment of Their Pictures. New York, 1923, 123–24, no. 26.100.
Schneider, Hans. Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke. Haarlem, 1932, 110, no. 74. Reprinted withsupplement by Rudolf Otto Ekkart, Amsterdam, 1973, 325, no. 74.
Von Schneider, Arthur. Caravaggio und die Niederländer. Marburg and Lahn, 1933, 73.
Bauch, Kurt. Die Kunst des jungen Rembrandt. Heidelberg, 1933, 220.
Bauch, Kurt. “Rembrandt und Lievens.” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 11 (1939): 258–59.
Bauch, Kurt. Der frühe Rembrandt und sein Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung seines Frühstils.
Berlin, 1960, 265–66 n. 184.
Bauch, Kurt. “Zum Werk des Jan Lievens (II).” Pantheon 25 (1967): 262.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94, 3:1794, 1874,under no. 1235.
Surh, Dominique. “A Philosopher.” In Salomon Lilian: Old Masters 2005. Sales cat. Amsterdam,Salomon Lilian B.V. Amsterdam, 2005, 28–31, no. 8.
Surh, Dominique. “A Bookkeeper at His Desk.” In Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in
the Age of Vermeer. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 128–29, no. 23. Exh. cat. Kyoto, Kyoto
Municipal Museum of Art; Miyagi, Miyagi Museum of Art; Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Art. Tokyo,
2011.
Schnackenburg, Bernhard. Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt. Petersberg, 2016,
295, no. 111.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara “Bookkeeper at His Desk.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from TheLeiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 36; 173, no. 8. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat.
Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund. Shanghai, 2017, 56–57.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Bookkeeper at His Desk.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 108–9; 236, no. 21. Translated by Daria Babichand Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State
Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 70–1, no. 12. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Sevcik, Anja K., ed. Inside Rembrandt 1606-1669. Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum &Fondation Corboud. Petersberg, 2019, 147–48, fig. 39.2.
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Technical Summary
The support is a rectangular composite panel composed of three vertically grained Baltic oak planks: a wide
central plank flanked by two narrower planks. Planks 2 and 3 are from the same tree, and the earliest
creation date of the painting is 1603.[1] There are no bevels, and the panel has been cradled. There is one
paper label and two white chalk inscriptions but no wax seals, import stamps, stencils or panel maker’smarks.
The X-radiograph reveals an earlier three-quarter-length portrait of a male wearing a white ruff oriented
upside down below the present composition.[2] In raking light, the figure-eight-shaped curves of theunderlying ruff are visible in the book in the foreground of the present composition, and the slightly raised
thumb and curved fingers of the figure’s proper right hand can be seen to the right of the visible man’s head.
A warm, light-colored ground is thinly and evenly applied. A dark underlayer shows through the upper twothirds of the composition, and a light tan underlayer shows through the lower third of the composition. Theunderlayers presumably relate to the earlier portrait located below the present composition. The paint has
been applied with visible brushwork and texture through the figure’s forehead, beard, and yellow cloak, andthinly with loose transparent brushwork along the upper right corner. Portions of the figure’s beard hairs havebeen inscribed in wet paint with the back of a brush.
No underdrawing is evident with infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The images suggest theman’s proper left shoulder and sleeve may have been shifted to the left during the paint stage.
The painting is signed with a single letter in dark paint along the lower left corner.
The painting was cleaned and restored in Paris in 2003, at which time the monogram was discovered.[3] It has
not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2006 and remains in a good state ofpreservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Peter Klein’s 2008 dendrochronology report.
2. According to email correspondence with Dominique Surh, Leiden Collection curator, “The man in theruff is unlike any portrait type Lievens had/or was doing at the time, suggesting that the panel waspreviously used by an artist other than Lievens himself.”
3. According to Dominique Surh, Leiden Collection curator.

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