RQ-11 · Open
Can any owner of this sheet before 2023 be identified?
Why it matters
The sheet's own provenance is blank for roughly 177 years before 2023. Any evidenced point inside that blank is a substantive addition — not because it makes the object more valuable, but because a print with a traceable history is a different research object from one without. Impressions with recorded provenance can be placed in collections, and collections can be dated, which loops back to when the sheet was printed.
What the record currently holds
No owner of this sheet before 2023 has been identified, and one route to finding one is now closed: the verso is blank, so there is no collector's mark to trace. What has been added is the descent of the copper plate itself, which New Hollstein records in full from possibly Clement de Jonghe in 1679 through the Basan workshop and four subsequent owners to a private collection in the United States. If this impression is state III it was pulled somewhere inside that chain — most likely in the Basan period, since two of the seven recorded state III impressions are bound into Basan albums.
- 3Institutional recordNew Hollstein Dutch & Flemish, Rembrandt, no. 170, pp. 31–32 and plates 84–87 · Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers · 2013on request
- 5Auction catalogueCondition-report photographs of the sheet, recto and verso, supplied by the auction house · Bonhams · 2023-05-03on request
Method
- 01Examine the verso under ultraviolet and raking light for a faded stamp or erased inscription that plain light will not show.
- 02Trace the Basan-period printing: the catalogue lists state III impressions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Cracow, Florence, St Petersburg and Vevey, two of them in Basan albums. A sheet matching one of those albums in paper and trimming would place this one.
- 03Ask the auction house whether the consignor consents to be named.
What would resolve it
A collector's mark, a dealer's stock number, or an entry in an earlier sale catalogue that can be matched on measurements and condition features.