The card player.

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 Bishop Ditlev Monrad, who donated this print to the Colonial Museum in 1869, and Sir John Ilott, who donated 39 Rembrandts to the National Art Gallery.

The card player is a small, minor, but understandably popular etching. This shifty-eyed poker face was probably a student of Rembrandt's. In the original state, Rembrandt was apparently dissatisfied with the pictorial relationship between the card player and the wall behind him, and he returned to the copper plate to darken the shadow with vigorous cross-hatching, thereby creating the second state. Although there is no candle visible, as in the contemporaneous Man drawing from a cast, another Monrad donation (1869-0001-417), this is obviously an evening scene, an appropriate time for playing cards.

This impression is the third of five states. It has been reworked throughout by Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-86), but pre-dates the removal of Watelet’s inscription on the lower left and the evening out of shading in the background. Watelet was a major figure of the pre-revolutionary French art world, a collector, connoisseur and highly competent engraver. He acquired 43 of Rembrandt's etching plates in 1767, and about forty more elsewhere, and kept them until his death. His reworking of this plate should be regarded as an act of tribute to Rembrandt, whom he greatly admired.

 

References: New Hollstein Dutch 193, 3rd of 5 states; Hollstein Dutch 136, undescribed state

 

See:

Christopher-Clark Fine Art, http://clarkfineart.com/artists/old-masters/rembrandt-van-rijn/the-card-player/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude-Henri_Watelet

 

Dr Mark Stocker     Curator, Historical International Art     September 2017