Joseph telling his dreams.

Joseph was the son of Jacob and Rachel, the story of whose life was regarded as prefiguring that of Christ. The seventeen-year-old's interpretation of his own dream, in which his brothers' sheaves of corn bowed down to his own sheaf, increased his unpopularity among them (Genesis 37). When he again dreamed that "the sun and moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me" - the dream being interpreted here - they finally decided to do away with him. A thematically related work by Rembrandt also in the collection is the earlier (1633) depiction of a later episode in the story, when Joseph's brothers show the grieving Jacob his bloody coat, and convince him that Joseph has been killed by a wild beast (see Te Papa 1869-0001-402 and 1967-0027-7). The full story unfolds in the Book of Genesis.

Talking of which, the genesis of this etching is unusual. In 1631 Rembrandt drew in red chalk a Seated old man. This belongs to a group of independent studies of elderly men that do not appear to have been made with any particular painting or print in mind. While making the drawing, he lowered the position of the subject's right leg, leaving part of the first version hanging in the air. Two to three years later, the figure was adapted with minor alterations in detail (and giving the impression of a higher viewpoint) as Jacob in Rembrandt's grisaille (monochrome painting)  of Joseph telling his dreams. This anticipates the present etching in several respects, but on a much larger scale. Joseph and Jacob face each other in profile, dividing the composition into two distinct halves. It may have been intended as the model for a reproductive engraving, but it was never executed. 

In 1638, Rembrandt made the present etching in which he reconfigured the composition, placing Joseph in the centre of a circle of figures. The moment of alteration is documented by a drawing of the same year, one of the slightest to have survived from his hand. In red chalk he schematically roughed out the five foreground figures much as they appear, in reverse, in the print: Joseph is turned towards the spectator, holding his hands at waist level, Jacob remains on the right, while a new protagonist is introduced in the left foreground, seen from behind and turned towards Joseph. Beyond to the left Rembrandt repeated the man leaning on a table from the grisaille version.

The seated figure on the left of the rough sketch, and the oriental standing immediately behind Joseph, were both studied in another ink drawing, one of a number in this medium that relate to works of 1638-9. While the woman was used in the print without any significant change, the oriental's nearer arm was raised to form a 'backcloth' for Joseph's head. In recasting the design Rembrandt added a vista through an arch to a man (rending his clothes?) in another room, and the sleeping dog, first seen in the foreground of the grisaille, now cleans itself.

The drawings and sketches reveal that Rembrandt had pondered the subject for five years before publishing the etching in 1638. The resulting print was not radically altered in the three states: the second eliminates some hatching between the foreground woman's cheek and Joseph's arm; in Te Papa's example, a third state etching, (c. 1640), shading was added to the foreground (including Joseph's legs) as well as to the figures behind Joseph, so that the latter stands out even more prominently.

Rembrandt's iconography is characteristically unusual in that it includes women in a subject normally described as an all-male event: the one in the foreground studied in the drawing, and another, bedridden woman in the background. She has been identified as Rachel, Joseph's mother, or Leah, Jacob's first wife. The younger foreground woman is possibly Dinah, Jacob's only daughter.

This impression, as stated above, is from the third state of six, and the last where Rembrandt himself exclusively worked on the plate. It can be identified by added shading in numerous places, most noticeably on the face and turban of the man standing behind Joseph; its is before the 18th-century addition, probably by French connoisseur and printmaker Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-86), of drypoint hatching to the table, the figure seated behind it, the turbaned man and the curtain behind him.

References: New Hollstein Dutch 167, 3rd of 6 states; Hollstein Dutch 37, 3rd of 3 states

 

See: British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=755735&partId=1&searchT ext=rembrandt+joseph+dreams&page=1 (quoting from Erik Hinterding et al, Rembrandt, the Printmaker, London, 2000). 

 

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    September 2017