Images(2)

Evangelist Writing

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)

Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas

Dimensions104.5 x 84.5 cm (41 1/8 x 33 1/4 in.)

Credit LineBartlett Collection—Museum purchase with funds from the Francis Bartlett Donation of 1912

Accession number39.581

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

InscriptionsFalsely signed, center right: Rembrandt f. 16 [canvas cut]ProvenanceThomas Emmerson (dealer), London. Mrs. Hall, London. Thomas Humphry Ward (b. 1845 - d. 1926), London [see note 1]. 1897, Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris [see note 2]. 1905, Lawrie and Co., London; January 28, 1905, Lawrie sale, Christie's, London, lot 101, bought in by Lawrie at £2205. 1909, Sulley and Co., London [see note 3]. Possibly James Stillman (b. 1850 - d. 1918), New York; possibly by inheritance to his son, Charles Chauncey Stillman (b. 1877 - d. 1926), New York; February 3, 1927, posthumous Stillman sale, American Art Association, New York, lot 26, sold for $78,000 to John Ringling, New York and Sarasota, FL; 1939, sold by the estate of John Ringling to the MFA for $85,000. (Accession Date: May 11, 1939)

NOTES:
[1] Early provenance information is taken from C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Edward Hawke (London, 1916), vol. 6, pp. 126-127, cat. no. 183, and has not been verified. The painting is also said to have been exhibited at Manchester, 1857. A Rembrandt, "Young Man in a Turban" was lent to Manchester in this year, but it is unlikely to have been the MFA painting. It was lent by Robert Napier, and -- as this painting was described in his collection catalogue of 1865 -- it measured 34 x 30 inches, was signed and dated 1642, and did not otherwise match the description of the MFA canvas. [2] "100 Paintings by Old Masters" (Paris: Sedelmeyer Gallery, 1897), p. 40, cat. no. 33. [3] W. R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Gemälde, 3d ed. (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1909), p. 458.