Three heads of women: one asleep.

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, two centuries later, they were affordable for Bishop Ditlev Monrad, who donated this example to the Colonial Museum in 1869.

 

Here, Rembrandt combines three sketches of women's heads, each in a different position and wearing different headgear. The woman with the dark headscarf looks straight ahead, while the woman below has lowered her gaze; the third, sporting a kind of balaclava with fur trim, is fast asleep, resting her head on her hand. Interestingly, Rembrandt has not worked up the plate in every detail, instead consciously creating a direct, sketch-like effect by merely indicating some of the passages with only a few swiftly drawn lines. In the same period (1636-1637), the artist executed two other similarly sketchy plates of the same motif. His wife, Saskia van Uylenburgh, was the model in several of these heads. In this print, the women at the upper left and lower centre seem to be the most likely 'Saskia' candidates. Rembrandt apparently often reused his inventions: the head at the lower centre appears again (reversed) in another etching.

Rembrandt may have borrowed the idea for this print from the various 'sample sheets', then in use by artists, showing, for example, a whole array of women's heads with fantastical head-coverings. Another source of inspiration must have been the sheets of studies after living models popular from the Middle Ages onwards. Important earlier Dutch artists such as Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) and Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1625) both made drawings very like Rembrandt's etchings. Given that these sketches were much sought after by collectors in the seventeenth century, Rembrandt, too, must have designed his prints with eventual sales in mind.

This impression is from the first of three states (the only one where Rembrandt exclusively worked on the plate). It pre-dates the restoration by another hand of many of the shaded areas (e.g. on the left cheek of the head lower centre, in front of the face and below, the chin of the woman upper right, around the fingers of the woman sleeping and behind her right ear).

References:

New Hollstein Dutch 161, 1st of 3 states; Hollstein Dutch 368, only state

 

See:

The Kremer Collection, http://www.thekremercollection.com/rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn-three-heads-of-women-one-asleep/

 

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   September 2017