Provenance
1638
creation · the work, not this sheet
Rembrandt etches the copper plate in Amsterdam. This event belongs to the work, not to this sheet: it is the origin of the image, and it is the only point on this timeline that is securely dated.
1679 – 1786
transfer · the work, not this sheet
New Hollstein records the plate as possibly in the 1679 inventory of Clement de Jonghe, as “13 conterf.[eytsel] van Rembr.[andt]”; then Pieter de Haan's sale of 1767, lot 2, to Fouquet; then Claude-Henri Watelet's sale of 1786, lot 365. This is the plate's history, not this sheet's — but this sheet came off that plate, so it bounds where it came from.
c. 1786 – 1846
printing · the work, not this sheet
Rembrandt's plates passed en bloc to Basan for 500 livres. Pierre-François Basan died in 1797; the plate descended to Henry-Louis Basan, who sold it around 1809 to Auguste Jean, and on Jean's death in 1820 to his widow, whose collection was auctioned in 1846 as lot 540. It is in this period that the plate was rebitten and reworked by a hand that was not Rembrandt's, producing the third state, and later had its signature clumsily redrawn in the Basan workshop, producing the fourth. If this sheet is state III, it was printed inside this window.
Unknown; after the plate was reworked, if state III holds
printing
If the state III attribution holds, this sheet was pulled after the plate had been rebitten and reworked by a hand that was not Rembrandt's. That would place it in the plate's French afterlife. The conditional matters: the state attribution is one cataloguer's, and the feature the record leaned on to support it — an absent signature — does not in fact separate state III from state II, because the catalogue's reproduction of state II does not show the signature clearly either. No date is asserted here.
1846
Undocumented
The sheet's own ownership is undocumented for most of this period. One link is now named: the auction house's specialist states that the work was consigned by a European antiquarian dealer, from a private collection in Germany. Neither the dealer nor the family is named, and the project has not seen documentation behind the statement — but it is the department specialist's own account and it is the first evidenced point inside the gap.
c. 1846 – before 2023
What would fill any part of this
still nothing · 2023
1846 – 1993
transfer · the work, not this sheet
Bought in 1846 by Auguste Bernard, by descent to his son Michel Bernard, who sold it in 1906 to Alvin-Beaumont, who sold it in 1937 to Robert Lee Humber; on Humber's death in 1970 to his heirs, and sold in 1993 through Artemis London with R.M. Light. The catalogue records the plate as last in a private collection in the United States.
Before April 2023
consignment
The department specialist at the auction house states that the work was consigned by a European antiquarian dealer, acting for a private collection in Germany. The family is not named and the house declined to disclose it. This is a statement by a named professional about a transaction he handled, which is good evidence of the consignment route and no evidence at all about how long the German collection had held the sheet.
24 April – 4 May 2023
sale
Offered in Fine Books and Manuscripts, an online-only sale, and sold as lot 182. The catalogue described it as a drypoint etching, 137 × 104 mm, unsigned and undated (but 1638), on laid paper, with the left margin roughly trimmed, some wrinkling and dampstaining to the lower left corner including part of the image, unmounted; and catalogued it as Bartsch 20, New Hollstein 170, state III of IV. The receipt is dated 17 May 2023. The consignor is not named in the catalogue and is not known to the project.
2023 – present
ownership
Held in a private collection in Dubai. The sheet has not been exhibited, lent, published or examined by a conservator during this period. It has not been displayed, so its cumulative light exposure in these years is nil.
12 August 2026
publication
The object receives the identifier NP-RMB-001 and a public record. Publication itself becomes part of the provenance: from this date the sheet has a citable, versioned scholarly history that travels with it.
Gaps are events. A gap has an id, a duration and a place in the record, and it is published in the API alongside the documented events rather than being the absence between them.
Two of the events on this timeline belong to the work rather than to this sheet. The plate being worked in 1638 is a fact about the composition; every impression of it shares that event. The moment this particular sheet was pulled from the plate is a fact about this sheet, and it is the one marked unknown.
Publication is itself a provenance event. From 12 August 2026 this sheet has a citable, versioned scholarly history that travels with it — which is a small thing now and compounds.