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Overview
During his lifetime, Rembrandt's extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands. It also explains why, in later centuries, they were affordable for collectors such as Bishop Ditlev Monrad and Sir John Ilott. This print was originally mounted in the so-called King George Album, purchased by the Dominion Museum in 1910, but within a few years, James McDonald, art assistant, photographer and sometime acting director, had crudely removed it (together with the other Rembrandts), probably with its later exhibition in mind. It has not been returned to the album.
A stirring contemporary genre scene, brimming with detail, The Strolling Musicians, revisits a recurring theme, Rembrandt's sympathetic inquiry into the lives of impoverished people around him, including beggars. Two musicians, one playing a hurdy gurdy, and the other, the bagpipes, lean before an absorbed looking family with a toddler to perform. Light from inside the home illuminates the dim, intimate moment, thus highlighting the profiles the players. Rembrandt is widely acknowledged for the sense of humanity he exposed in these humble subjects, straying from satirical portrayals that often denigrated the plight of the lower classes in other artistic representations.
This impression dates from the eighteenth century and is the second of three states (the first by Rembrandt). New lines, for instance on the toddler's cap and front, have been added, and with fine hatching also added to many of the shadow. Our print was probably reworked by Claude Henri Watelet (1718-86), the French connoisseur, collector and engraver, who at one stage owned over 80 of Rembrandt's etching plates. Te Papa's collection has another impression, which is first state, and was presented to the Colonial Museum in 1869 by Monrad (1869-0001-413).
Refs: New Hollstein Dutch 141, 2nd of 3 states; Hollstein Dutch 119, 2nd of 2 states
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art September 2017