Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680)

Trois Crayons Newsletter, November 2024

Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has formed a key part of an artist’s education since the Renaissance and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.

This Dutch 17th-century artist is among the most widely imitated and highly admired draughtsmen of all time, due partly to the scale of his workshop and the number of contemporary followers he attracted, and partly to the vast sums his name commands on the art market. The differentiation between master and pupil has been the topic of much debate and academic revisionism over the centuries. The present example is one whose authorship remains contested, and a classic case study highlighting the difficulties surrounding the oeuvre of this enigmatic artist and his followers. But which is the original and which is the copy, and who is the artist?

• answer

  The original, of course, is the lower image. Although the drawing was once thought to be by Rembrandt, it is now attributed to Ferdinand Bol, one of Rembrandt's most celebrated pupils.

  Upper image: Anonymous after Ferdinand Bol?, Esau selling his Birthright to Jacob, British Museum, London, 1873,0510.3544

  Lower image: attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), Esau selling his Birthright to Jacob, Historisch Museum, Amsterdam

  On entering the British Museum in 1873, the lower drawing was attributed to Rembrandt himself, albeit with some degree of doubt. In 1906 the drawing was recognised by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot as a copy of the upper drawing, which is now in the Historisch Museum, Amsterdam. In 1973, Otto Benesch, the great Rembrandt scholar, catalogued the drawing in Amsterdam as an original by Rembrandt, and the British Museum drawing as a copy after it (Benesch 564). There are many copies of subject drawings like this by Rembrandt, and it is believed that he had his pupils copy them.

  In 1982 however Peter Schatborn noted that the British Museum's version more correctly shows Esau's gaze directed at Jacob. He also saw improvements in the drawing of Jacob's right hand and in the understanding of the tablecloth. He therefore suggested that both drawings might depend on a now lost original. More recently, Martin Royalton-Kisch has suggested that these attempts at improvement in the British Museum drawing are those of a student copyist, and Evert van den Berg has suggested that they may represent a second attempt by the same artist. Both agree that the British Museum drawing is a copy of the one in Amsterdam.

  As if that wasn’t straightforward enough, Royalton-Kisch has also raised doubts over the attribution of the Amsterdam drawing to Rembrandt, suggesting that an attribution to Ferdinand Bol, a Rembrandt pupil, is more likely. He writes in his online catalogue, The Drawings of Rembrandt: “there are several reasons also to assign the Amsterdam drawing to one of his [Rembrandt’s] pupils and it appears to be by the same hand as many studies now attributed to Ferdinand Bol. The modelling, for example, is worked up in many parts, especially in the figure of Esau, and yet remains flat and imprecise; the same figure looks more towards the spectator than at Jacob, and the comparison with Rembrandt’s own version of the subject (Benesch 0606) leaves the present drawing wanting in energy, characterisation and narrative skill. In every part the relative clumsiness of the modelling is revealed […] Yet the attribution to Bol needs to be treated with some caution, as the stylistic connections are less clear with Bol’s documentary drawings […]”

  Who would be a Rembrandt scholar?