Physical description
'The Departure of the Shunammite Woman'
Place of Origin
Amsterdam (painted)
Date
1640 (painted)
Artist/maker
Rembrandt van Rijn (workshop of, artist)
Materials and Techniques
oil on oak panel
Marks and inscriptions
"'Rembrandt f 1640'" Signed and dated, lower left
Dimensions
Height: 39 cm (estimate)
Width: 53.2 cm (estimate)
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800, C.M. Kauffmann, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973
Object history note
Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900. Ionides acquired the work before November 1881, when he estimated its value at £1000; the subject was then identified as 'Abraham dismissing Agar and Ismail' (his inventory, private collection).
Descriptive line
Oil painting, 'The Departure of the Shunammite Woman', workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn, 1640
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Lammertse, Friso and Jaap van der Veen, ,Uylenburgh & Son. Art and commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse Zwolle, Waanders Publishers and Amsterdam, The Rembrandt House Museum, 2006. ISBN 9040082529. NAL Pressmark: Copy in NAL.
Exhibition catalogue
Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 234-236, cat. no. 292.
The following is the full text of the entry:
REMBRANDT van Rijn (1606-69)
Dutch School
He was born in Leyden; who his masters were is in doubt, though Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) was probably amongst them. His paintings date from 1625 on, and he was the engraver of his own paintings. He moved to Amsterdam in 1631 or 2, and remained there for the rest of his life. He married Saskia van Ulenborch in 1634. In 1656 he became insolvent.
292
THE DEPARTURE OF THE SHUNAMMITE WOMAN
Signed lower left Rembrandt f 1640
Oak panel
15 3/8 X 21 (39 X 53.2) including strip 1 3/8 (3.5) wide added at top
Ionides Bequest
CAI.78
From the time it was first recorded in the 18th century (Fabricius sale, 1749) this 'painting has been described as Abraham dismissing Hagar and Ishmael. However, it was realized that the composition was unusual for this scene; in particular, it appeared to be the only example showing Hagar mounted. Consequently it was suggested by Hofstede de Groot (1899) and Bredius (1942) that it was ‘originally intended for a Flight into Egypt and afterwards altered by Rembrandt himself as a Dismissal of Hagar. This was a plausible hypothesis, but it was not supported by X-ray photographs, which showed no compositional changes of this kind.
More recently a convincing solution was proposed by Dr Christian Tümpel (1966; 1969), who identified the scene as showing the Departure of the Shunammite Woman. After the death of her son, the Shunammite woman went to Elisha to ask for his help, and the scene shows her departure from her husband: 'Then she saddled an ass and said to her servant, drive and go forward ... ' (2 Kings, 4, 24). Tümpel showed that Rembrandt had derived the composition from one of a series of Old Testament engravings by Hans Collaert (1566-1628) after Maerten de Vos. The composition is similar to that of the Departure of the Shunammite Woman in this series and the figure of the woman herself is very close to that in the next scene of this cycle, in which she is again shown mounted.
X-ray photographs show that the painting has been altered considerably since it left the artist's studio. They reveal large areas of lead white in the upper half and on the left between the woman and her husband. As lead white does not appear under the figures, it cannot have been used as an even layer of underpaint for the whole surface. Its presence in limited areas at the top suggests that these originally consisted of sky rather than of dark foliage.
The foliage, therefore, seems to have been painted over the sky at a later date, and this hypothesis is borne out both by the paint surface, which is rougher in the overpainted areas than elsewhere, and by certain features of the composition. The shepherd, cows and sheep on the left are on a very small scale and would be more comprehensible in the middle distance of an open landscape. Furthermore, as the painting now stands, there is no apparent source of light. This also becomes more comprehensible if a day light scene is envisaged. A close comparison could then be made with the distribution of light in Rembrandt's work of this time, such as the Visitation of 1640 in Detroit (Bauch, 1965, pl. 70).
The X-ray photographs also revealed that the central part of the building on the right originally reached up to the edge of the painting. It would appear, therefore, that, when the painting was enlarged by 3.5 cm. at the top, an arch was painted over the sky in the centre and on the left, and the new strip was painted brown to fit with these changes. In this way the original day light scene was transformed into a night scene.
At the Fabricius sale in 1749 the size of the painting was given as '1 ft. 3 in. by 1 ft. 9 ½ in.' . As the present height is 1 ft 3 3/8 ins., this suggests that the strip 1 5/8 in. deep had already been added to the top of the original panel before 1749.
Condition. See above.
Prov. Willem Fabricius van Almkerk, sale Haarlem, 19 Aug. 1749 (G. Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen, ii, 1752, p. 264); Bouchier Cleeve collection (1715-60), bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth, who married, in 1765, Sir George Yonge, Bt (1731-1812); his collection sold Christie's, 23-4 Mar. 1806; John Parke, sold Coxe, 9 May 1812, lot 29 (bought in), and again at Christie’s, 16 June 1821, lot 58; 1836, L. Crespigny; 1885 or earlier, Constantine Alexander Ionides, in whose bequest it passed to the Museum in 1900.
Exh. British Institution, July 1832, no. 28; Old Masters, R. A., 1894, no. 95 and 1899, no. 49; Rembrandt tentoonstelling, Amsterdam, 1898, no. 46.
Lit. R. and J. Dodsley, publ., London and its environs, ii, 176r, p. 314 (Cleeve collection, Foots Cray, Kent); Smith, Cat. Rais., vii, 1836, no. 3; G. K. Nagler, Leben und Werke…Rembrandt van Ryn, 1843, p. 17; C. Vosmaer, Rembrandt, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2nd ed., 1877, p. 522; Monkhouse, 1884, p. 214; E. Dutuit, Tableaux et dessins de Rembrandt (Supplément a l'oeuvre complet,1885, p, 49; Würzbach, Rembrandt Galerie, 1886, no. 269; E. Michel, Rembrandt, Eng. ed .. ii, 1894, p. 236; C. Hofstede de Groot (review of Amsterdam exhibition) in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft; xxii, 1899, p, 163; W. Bode, The complete works of Rembrandt, iv, 1900, no. 240, repr.; W. R. Valentiner, Rembrandt und seine Umgebung, 1905, p. 30; A. Rosenberg, Rembrandt, K. d. K., 3rd ed., 1909, p. 222, repr.; Hofstede de Groot, vi, 1915, nos. 5 & 6 (d); Long, Cat. Ionides Coll. , 1925, p. 51, pl. 29; W. Weisbach, Rembrandt, 1926, p. 218; R. Hamann, 'Hagars Abschied bei Rembrandt ...' in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft ; viii-ix, 1936, p. 515 f., fig. 68; A. Bredius, The paintings of Rembrandt, 1942, no. 508, repr.; O. Benesch, Rembrandt, 1957, p. 63; K. Bauch, Rembrandt, 1965, no. 22, repr.; 3rd ed., rev. H. Gerson, 1969, pl. 422; C. Tümpel in Kunstchronik, xix, 1966, p. 302; ibid., 'Studien zur Ikonographie des historischen Rembrandts' in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 20, 1969, p. 118, fig. 3, cf. figs. 6 & 7.
Smith, Catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French painters, vol. VII p. 2
A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, III, 1635-1642, J. Bruyn... [et.al], Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, 1989, pp.542-550
Page 542, "Summarized opinion. A work probably executed in Rembrandt's workshop in 1640, perhaps attributable to Ferdinand Bol. At some time, probably after 1749, a strip of the panel has been replaced, and the background to a large extent overpainted."
Materials
Oil paint; Oak
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
After the death of her son, the Shunammite woman went to Elisha to ask for his help, and the scene shows her departure from her husband: 'Then she saddled an ass and said to her servant, drive and go forward ... ' (2 Kings, 4, 24).
Categories
Paintings; Religion; Christianity
Collection code
PDP
