26 - Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn

Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) The Satyr and the Peasants sepia ink on paper sheet: 4 1/2 x 5 3/8 in. (11.4 x 13.7 cm) Property from the Estate of Ambassador J. William Middendorf II, Rhode Island This lot is located in Philadelphia. Framed: 10 1/4 x 10 7/8 x 1 1/8 in. Mat: 7 5/8 x 8 1/4 in. Sheet is hinged to back mat via two pieces of conservator's tape at back corners. Inscribed indistinctly Van Eeckhout..., verso. Sheet is unevenly toned, primarily concentrated at edges. Minor brown discoloration at lower right. Additional images available upon request. Provenance: An unidentified collector's number 'N°. 660' (verso). Prince Karl von Solms-Braunfels (1812-1875). R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam, sale of January 24-25, 1922, Lot 264 (as Jacob Jordaens). Lore and Rudolf Heinemann, New York. Christie's, London, sale of July 1,1997, Lot 210 (as Gerbrand van den Eeckhout). Otto Naumann, New York, acquired from the above sale (as Gerbrand van den Eeckhout). Christie's, New York, sale of January 27, 2016, Lot 51. Literature: Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, 1980, III, no. 748x (as Gerbrand van den Eeckhout). Exhibited: ?New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, Drawings from the Collection of Lore and Rudolf Heinemann, 1973, no. 3. Lot Note: The present drawing is loosely based on Jacob Jordaens’s painting of the same subject, now in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel. It was attributed to Jordaens when it appeared in the 1922 Amsterdam sale, with the later attribution to van den Eeckhout proposed by Dr. J. C. Ebbinge-Wubben and subsequently supported by Professor Sumowski. The subject derives from Aesop’s Fables, in which a satyr observes a peasant blowing on his hands to warm them and then on his porridge to cool it, giving rise to the expression “blowing hot and cold.” The story was interpreted as a parable of inconstancy and became a popular subject among Netherlandish and Dutch artists during the seventeenth century.