Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn(–)

probably early 1650s
oil on canvas
114 x 96.2 cm
GE-101© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 2 of 11

How to cite
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue,
2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/jacobshown-josephs-bloody-coat/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 3 of 11

The Old Testament story of Joseph fueled the imagination of Dutch artists,

Comparative Figures

not only for the marvelous exploits of the young leader, but also for the
jealousies, deceits and betrayals that mark the complex narrative of his life.[1]The cause of many of those jealousies was the coat of many colors that his
father, Jacob, had presented to him as a sign that he was the favored son.
The tragic consequences, when Joseph’s brothers turned against him, aredescribed in Genesis 37:12–35. When Joseph, having been sent by his
father to report on the status of his brothers who were herding sheep, foundthem in the land of Dothan, his brethren conspired to kill him. However,Fig 1. Jan Pynas, Jacob Shown
Joseph’s Bloody Coat, 1618, oil on
panel, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 5588

Reuben, one of the brothers, dissuaded them from committing fratricide and,instead, they threw Joseph into a pit. Although Reuben intended to rescue
Joseph and return him to his father, Joseph was taken to Egypt after theothers sold him to passing Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. Reuben,
upon discovering that Joseph was missing, then conspired with his brothers
to deceive Jacob into believing that Joseph had been eaten by a wild beast.
To feign his death they dipped Joseph’s coat in the blood of a goat, which
they then took to the aged patriarch. Seeing the bloody coat, Jacob tore his
garments in grief, donned sackcloth, and, taking no comfort in his family’s
consolations, mourned Joseph’s loss.

Fig 2. Jan Lievens, Jacob
Receiving Joseph’s Bloody Coat,probably mid 1640s, oil on canvas,
Collection Joseph and Lieve
Guttmann, USA

In this dramatic visualization of the story, one feels the full horror of the
moment Jacob sees the bloody coat held up before him, and can almost
hear Jacob’s anguished cry piercing through the late afternoon darkness.
His flailing arms and legs reveal an inconsolable man devastated by thedreadful news that a wild beast has killed his favorite son. The biblical text
implies that Reuben, presumably the tall gesticulating shepherd standing justbehind the brother holding the bloody coat, was the spokesman for thebrothers. Other family members, including a praying man in the lower left, try
to support Jacob physically and emotionally, but to no avail. Two dogs, one
drawn to the blood on the cloak and one to the aged patriarch, reinforce thedrama of the story. Other figures, curious about the uproar but not daring tocome too close, congregate near the arched entranceway of the courtyard.
Over the course of the seventeenth century, a number of Dutch artists

Fig 3. Gerbrandt van den
Eeckhout, Jacob Shown Joseph’s
Bloody Coat, c. 1665, pen andbrown ink and gray washes,
Musée du Louve, Paris, 22.906

depicted this biblical story of betrayal and deceit, beginning with Jan Pynas(1581–1631), who executed his large panel painting Jacob Shown Joseph’s
Bloody Coat in 1618 (fig 1). Pynas likewise poignantly depicted aninconsolable Jacob grieving over the bloody coat, surrounded by caring
members of his family. Jan Lievens (1607–74) must have known Pynas’sforceful representation of this scene when he depicted this subject in a large© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 4 of 11

painting in the mid 1640s (fig 2). As in Pynas’s image, Jacob, having beenshown the bloody cloak, sits with crossed arms and refuses to be comforted
by his family. Lievens intensified the dramatic moment by bringing the action
closer to the viewer and eliminating compositional elements that Pynas had
included to place the scene within a larger narrative framework. Lievens also
altered Jacob’s posture, making it more rigid, and depicted him with his eyes
closed, signaling that he has hardened his heart to the entreaties of thosearound him.
Joost van den Vondel expressly cited Pynas’s painting as a source ofinspiration for his tragedy Joseph in Dothan, published in 1640. In his
introduction to the play, Van den Vondel wrote that “in the closing [passages]of this work, [we] have tried to emulate with words, as far as we can, thepainter’s colors, drawings, and passions.”[2] The passions Van den Vondel
was able to invoke are evident in the concerns of Jacob’s eldest son,
Reuben, who, imagining how the scene would unfold when Jacob wasshown the bloody coat, mused:
Methinks I see with what a piteous gestureHe throws up his arms and sinks backwards,
His head bare; his whole countenance assuming
The nature of a corpse: the maidens, children, youths,
Our women, mothers, and th’entire household
Throng in at his lament: the little Benjamin,Standing at his feet, at the weeping of the mothers,
Weeps unaware at the loss of his trusty brother.[3]Van den Vondel’s play was a huge success and was shown numerous times
at the Amsterdam Schouwburg during the 1640s and 1650s,[4] and the play
inspired some of the varied depictions of this story that Amsterdam artists
made during these years.[5] The most theatrical of these paintings, theLeiden Collection work is an almost verbatim portrayal of Reuben’s vision of
the distraught Jacob throwing up his arms in despair while his household
gathers to support him in his misery, and it seems probable that Van den
Vondel’s play had a huge impact on its character. The many associations
between the painting and the play suggest that the painting dates from theearly 1650s, when the play was at the height of its popularity.
This large and impressive canvas was long thought to have been painted by
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), but this attribution has not been upheld for a© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 5 of 11

number of years. Most recently, Werner Sumowski has proposed that thepainting was executed in the mid- to late 1660s by Gerbrand van den
Eeckhout (1621–74), largely on the basis of similarities that exist between it
and Van den Eeckhout’s drawing of the same subject in the Louvre (fig 3).
[6]

He concluded that the drawing, which he dates to the mid- to late 1660s,

was a preliminary study for the painting.[7]The striking similarities between the drawing and the painting initially seem tosubstantiate Sumowski’s conclusion. In each work the distraught Jacob liesat the lower left with his arms spread wide as family members try to comfort
him, while in the immediate background a large architectural structure withan arched opening frames a view into the distance. Nevertheless, sufficientdifferences exist between the two works—for example, in the angle of
Jacob’s outthrust arms, and the number and disposition of the figures
populating the scene—to suggest that the drawing was an independent
creation only loosely connected to the painting.
A date in the mid- to late 1660s does not accord with the stylistic character of
Van den Eeckhout’s paintings at that stage of his career. In the 1660s, Van
den Eeckhout preferred quieter subjects, presenting Old Testament
narratives in an understated manner rather than emphatically stressing thedrama, as in this work. In his later works he modeled his figures quite
carefully and gave his scenes added pictorial interest by articulating costumedetails, including the textures of their materials; such characteristics are notevident in the rough modeling seen here.
The relationship between the drawing and this painting may be explained by
Van den Eeckhout’s approach to creating his series of drawings on the lifeof Joseph: he looked to earlier depictions of the life of Joseph for inspirationand freely adapted them when creating his designs. For example, his
drawing Joseph Telling His Dreams from that series is freely based on
Rembrandt’s 1638 etching of the same subject.[8] The relationship of Van
den Eeckhout’s drawing Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat to the Leiden
Collection painting must be understood in a similar fashion. This painting wasprobably the source of inspiration for Van den Eeckhout’s drawing.
The question then remains whether Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat is
consistent with Van den Eeckhout’s style of painting from the 1650s. The
story of Joseph intrigued Van den Eeckhout throughout his career, and heeven made a series of drawings of the life of Joseph in the early
1640s.[9] Among the many Old Testament narratives he painted in the 1640s
and 1650s, moreover, are a number that depict episodes from the life of© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 6 of 11

Joseph. He executed these paintings in a rough, expressive manner that hemust have learned when studying with Rembrandt in the late 1630s.
Generally, Van den Eeckhout preferred a rather dark, expansive setting forhis scenes, and he accented his figures with dramatically focused lighteffects and rich colors, much as in the present painting. Nevertheless, themanner in which the Leiden Collection painting is executed differs
fundamentally from these works. The blocky, somewhat inelegant forms of
the figures and the splotchy brushwork used to model them, where the artist
seems to have roughly dabbed his paint onto the canvas without modulating
the planes of color, differ from the more fluid brushwork that characterizes
Van den Eeckhout’s style of painting.
Unfortunately, an alternative attribution for this painting has yet to be found.
Although the dramatic focus of the composition, the chiaroscuro effects, andthe rough brushwork are all broadly related to works being produced byartists working within Rembrandt’s orbit around mid-century—including
Willem Drost (1633–59), Carel Fabritius (1622–54), Samuel van Hoogstraten(1627–78), Jan Lievens, Nicolaes Maes (1634–93), Constantijn van Renesse(1626–80), and Jan Victors (1619–after 1676)—no precise comparable
examples have thus far been identified. Until such such works appear, it
seems appropriate to label this expressive and emotionally charged painting
as “Circle of Rembrandt,” and to date it to the early 1650s.

- Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 7 of 11

Endnotes

1. See Christian Tümpel in Im Lichte Rembrandts: Das Alte Testament im Goldenen Zeitalter
der niederländischen Kunst (Exh. cat. Münster, , Westphalian State Museum of Art andCultural History; Amsterdam, Jewish Historical Museum; Jerusalem, Israel Museum) (Munich,1994), 41–47.
2. “Daer de bloedige rock den Vader vertoont wort: gelijck wy in ’t suiten van dit werck, ten
naesten by, met woorden des schilders verwen, teickeningen, en hartstoghten, pooghden na
te volgen.” Joost van den Vondel, De werken van Vondel, ed. Leo Simons et al., 10 vols.
(Amsterdam, 1929–37), 4: 74.
3. Joost van den Vondel, De werken van Vondel, ed. Leo Simons et al., 10 vols. (Amsterdam,
1929–37), 4: 74. The English translation is taken from Jeroen GIltaij, Guido Jansen, andJosua Bruyn, Een gloeiend palet: Schilderijen van Rembrandt en zijn School, Museum
Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 1988), 98, no. 32.
4. Jacob Adolf Worp, Geschiedenis van den Amsterdamschen schouwburg 1496–1772, ed. J.
F. M. Sterck (Amsterdam, 1920), 95.
5. Aside from Jan Lievens and Jan Victors, Rembrandt van Rijn, in his drawing from themid-1650s in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, also depicted this subject.
For Victors’s painting in the Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, see Werner Sumowski, Gemälde
der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94), 4: 2600, no. 1739. For
Rembrandt’s drawing, see Jeroen GIltaij, Guido Jansen, and Josua Bruyn, Een gloeiend
palet:

SchilderijenvanRembrandt

en

zijn

School,MuseumBoijmansvanBeuningen (Rotterdam, 1988), 98–9.
6. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. and trans. Walter L. Strauss, 10
vols. (New York, 1979–92), 3: 1422–23, no. 656; 1772, fig. 46. 9, no. 32.
7. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–84), 2:
737, no. 451.
8. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. and trans. Walter L. Strauss, 10
vols. (New York, 1979–92), 3:1416–17, no. 653, which reflects an element from Rembrandt’s
etching Joseph Telling His Dreams (B.37).
9. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. and trans. Walter L. Strauss, 10
vols. (New York, 1979–92), 3:1504–14, nos. 697x–702x. Van den Eeckhout, however, nevercompleted this cycle.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 8 of 11

ProvenanceJean-Baptist-Pierre Lebrun (1748–1813) (his sale, Paris, 20 December 1773, no. 12 [1,160
francs to Doujeu], as by Rembrandt).
Sir Robert Strange (1721–92), London (his sale, Christie’s, London, 5–6 May 1775, no. 116[for 65 gns.], as by Rembrandt).
Edward Smith-Stanley (1752–1834), 12th Earl of Derby, Lancashire Park, England, by 1818,
and by descent until 2000 (sale, Christie’s, London, 13 December 2000, no. 5, unsold as
attributed to Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout [with Simon Dickinson, New York, 2009]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2009.

Exhibition History
London, British Institution, 1818, 18, no. 139 [lent by the Earl of Derby, as by Rembrandt];
London, British Institution, 1855, 11, no. 95 [lent by the Earl of Derby, as by Rembrandt];
London, British Institution, 1867, 12, no. 127 [lent by the Earl of Derby, as by Rembrandt];
London, Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition, 1899, 31, no. 98 [lent by the Earl of Derby, as byRembrandt];
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, “Rembrandt,” 8 September–31 October 1898, no. 105 [lentby the Earl of Derby, as by Rembrandt];
London, Royal Academy (Burlington House), 1899, no. 98;
London, Grafton Galleries, 1911, 56, no. 58 [lent by the Earl of Derby, as by Rembrandt];
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 27 March–11 December 1979, permanent gallery exhibition[lent by the Earl of Derby, as attributed to the Circle of Fabritius].
Philadelphia Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, October 2013–October
2015 [lent by the present owner].

References
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 7:7, no. 19.
Scharf, George. A Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Collection at Knowsley Hall.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 9 of 11

London, 1875, no. 494.
Vosmaer, Carel. Rembrandt, sa vie et ses oeuvre. 2nd edition. Paris, 1877, 519.
Sweetser, Moses Foster. Rembrandt. Boston, 1879, 153.
Von Bode, Wilhelm. Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei. Braunschweig, 1883,
525, 586, no. 202.
Dutuit, Eugène. Tableaux et dessins de Rembrandt. Paris, 1885, 44.
Michel, Émile. Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, and His Time. Translated by Florence
Simmonds. 2 vols. New York, 1894, 2:235. Originally published as Rembrandt, sa vie, son
oeuvre et son temps. Paris, 1893.
Von Bode, Wilhelm, and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot. Rembrandt: beschreibendes
Verzeichniss seiner Gemälde mit den heliographischen Nachbildungen: Geschichte seines
Lebens und seiner Kunst. 8 vols. Paris, 1897–1906, 5: 80, no. 335; 7:211, no. 335.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. De Rembrandt Tentoonstelling te Amsterdam. Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam, 1898, no. 105.
Bell, Malcom. Rembrandt van Rijn. London, 1901, 74, 127.
Valentiner, Wilhelm. Rembrandt, Des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart and Berlin, 1908, 303, 559,
no. 303.
Bredius, Abraham. Kunstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der hollandischen Kunst des
XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. 8 vols. The Hague, 1915, 1:1742.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translatedby Edward G. Hawke, 6: 31, no. 15. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as
Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Tatlock, Robert Rattray. “Two Pictures from the School of Rembrandt.” Burlington
Magazine 39 (1921): 195–96.
Martin, Wilhelm. Rembrandt-Rätsel: Zu Valentiners neuem Rembrandt-Band. Berlin, 1921,
30.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Die holländische Kritik der jetzigen Rembrandt-Forschung undneust weidergefundene Rembrandtbilder. Stuttgart and Berlin, 1922, 20.
Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Rembrandt, des Meisters Handzeichnungen. 2 vols. Stuttgart, Berlin,and Leipzig, 1924, 1: 101, 468, no. 102.
De Lint, Jan Gérard. Rembrandt. The Hague, 1930, 14, fig. 3.
Benesch, Otto. The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Critical and Chronological Catalogue. 6 vols.
London, 1957, 5: 285, under no. 991, fig. 1204.
Sumowski, Werner. Bemerkungen zu Otto Beneschs Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen ll.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 10 of 11

Bad Pyrmont, 1961, 18, no. 991.
Schneider, Hans. Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke. Haarlem, 1932. Reprinted with
supplement by Rudolf Otto Ekkart, Amsterdam, 1973, 170, no. 1.
Sumowski, Werner. Drawings of the Rembrandt School. 10 vols. Edited and translated byWalter L. Strauss, 3: 1422, no. 656, 1772, fig. 46. New York, 1979–92.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94, 2:
737, no. 451, 814.

Versions
Related Drawings

1. Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Jacob Receiving Joseph’s Blood-Stained Tunic, ca. 1665, pen
and brown ink and gray washes, 205 x 162 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. 22.906.

2. Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob Is Shown Joseph’s Blood-stained Coat, c. 1655, pen and bistre,
in some parts covered with white body-color, 133 x 179 mm, Museum Boymans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam (formerly F. Koenigs Collection, Rotterdam).

Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of coarse, plain-weave fabric, has been lined. The lower tacking
margin has been turned out and the remaining tacking margins have been removed. There isbroad cusping along the upper and lower edges and slight cusping along the left and right edges.
A narrow fabric addition with a horizontal seam has been added to the lower edge. The composite
support has been lined and the original composition, which ends below the heel and knee of thekneeling male figure, has been extended and the entire foot has been completed on the lower
fabric addition. There are three paper labels but no wax collection seals, stencils or import stamps
along the lining or stretcher.
The ground, which appears to be red, has been evenly applied. The paint has been applied in aloose, sketchy manner (different in handling and with none of the fine details and brushwork
present in GE-100). Sets of sweeping, arched, parallel scratches along the upper right quadrant of
the composition, located above, through, and to the left of the architectural arch as well as
through the figures, suggest this area of the composition has been scraped and reworked.[1]No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. Dark
underdrawn lines are visible as pentimenti through the dog in the lower right corner’s white fur. A
more complete underdrawing may be visible in wavelengths that penetrate further into the infrared© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Jacob Shown Joseph’s Bloody Coat
Page 11 of 11

region. Further investigation is required.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since acquisition in 2009 and remains ina good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. There is no X-radiograph of this painting which could provide further information.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection