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Lot Essay
Rembrandt created this remarkable print early in his career, as he was still living and working in Leiden. The etching depicts the bust of a woman in profile facing left, seemingly seated behind a stone sill or wall, with her gaze averted from the viewer. She is wearing a dress with a wide, open neckline and an unusual, feathered headdress. Rembrandt had a liking for picturesque or old-fashioned garments, especially exotic headgear (see lots 1 & 4), which often make an appearance in his so-called tronies, studies of faces and facial expressions created during his early years as an etcher.
Formerly known as Het Moorinnetje ('The Mooress'), the work was described by Daniel Daulby as, ‘the face of this woman is the character of a Moor, though the complexion is fair.’ The 18th-century Parisian picture dealer and first cataloguer of Rembrandt's prints, Edmé-François Gersaint, referred to the print as 'Mauresse blanche', a title that stuck and found its way into the English literature as 'The White Negress'.
Her individual features, such as her high forehead, rounded cheeks and slight double-chin indicate that Rembrandt sketched her from life rather than repeating a stereotype. His friend, collaborator and competitor during those years in Leiden, Jan Lievens (1607-1674), produced an etching generally known as Head of a Moorish Woman of a similar size, which seems to depict the same unidentified woman.
Assuming that this is indeed a sketch of a Black woman, as the traditional titles suggest, Julia Lloyd Williams in her catalogue Rembrandt's Women argued that the religious context of the time shaped representations of Black people. In reference to Rembrandt's painting of the Baptism of the Eunuch of 1626 (Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht), which shows the baptism of an Ethiopian man by Philip the Evangelist (Acts 8:26–39), Lloyd Williams quotes the Dutch theologian Jacobus Revius (1586-1658): '[he] received baptism … with a faithful heart, his outer skin remained still black yet in his soul was he whiter than snow' (Lloyd-Williams, 2001, p. 74).
That Rembrandt intended to metaphorically imply some kind of spiritual purity by depicting the woman with white skin seems however doubtful and out of character. Indeed, neither Rembrandt nor Lievens were even trying to render the tone of her skin, but focused on her facial features alone. As so often in his etchings and also in this small portrait, Rembrandt was not interested in depicting local tonalities but the distribution for light and shade across a figure and within a given space. In this instance - unusual for the prints of this period - the light comes from the left, illuminating her face brightly and leaving only the right side of her head and body in the shade.
We will probably never know who the woman was, but her small portrait is one of the most unusual amongst Rembrandt's prints, and it would be fascinating to find out more about the circumstances of her modelling for the two young and ambitious artists in Leiden.
The first two states of this etching are unobtainable and only known in four and three impressions, respectively.
Formerly known as Het Moorinnetje ('The Mooress'), the work was described by Daniel Daulby as, ‘the face of this woman is the character of a Moor, though the complexion is fair.’ The 18th-century Parisian picture dealer and first cataloguer of Rembrandt's prints, Edmé-François Gersaint, referred to the print as 'Mauresse blanche', a title that stuck and found its way into the English literature as 'The White Negress'.
Her individual features, such as her high forehead, rounded cheeks and slight double-chin indicate that Rembrandt sketched her from life rather than repeating a stereotype. His friend, collaborator and competitor during those years in Leiden, Jan Lievens (1607-1674), produced an etching generally known as Head of a Moorish Woman of a similar size, which seems to depict the same unidentified woman.
Assuming that this is indeed a sketch of a Black woman, as the traditional titles suggest, Julia Lloyd Williams in her catalogue Rembrandt's Women argued that the religious context of the time shaped representations of Black people. In reference to Rembrandt's painting of the Baptism of the Eunuch of 1626 (Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht), which shows the baptism of an Ethiopian man by Philip the Evangelist (Acts 8:26–39), Lloyd Williams quotes the Dutch theologian Jacobus Revius (1586-1658): '[he] received baptism … with a faithful heart, his outer skin remained still black yet in his soul was he whiter than snow' (Lloyd-Williams, 2001, p. 74).
That Rembrandt intended to metaphorically imply some kind of spiritual purity by depicting the woman with white skin seems however doubtful and out of character. Indeed, neither Rembrandt nor Lievens were even trying to render the tone of her skin, but focused on her facial features alone. As so often in his etchings and also in this small portrait, Rembrandt was not interested in depicting local tonalities but the distribution for light and shade across a figure and within a given space. In this instance - unusual for the prints of this period - the light comes from the left, illuminating her face brightly and leaving only the right side of her head and body in the shade.
We will probably never know who the woman was, but her small portrait is one of the most unusual amongst Rembrandt's prints, and it would be fascinating to find out more about the circumstances of her modelling for the two young and ambitious artists in Leiden.
The first two states of this etching are unobtainable and only known in four and three impressions, respectively.