A Hawker Showing an Animal in a Cage to a Woman and Her Child

School of Rembrandt van Rijn

mid-17th century · Reed pen and brown ink, pen and gray washes; verso in pen and dark brown ink. · Robert Lehman Collection

A man, possibly a peddler or a street entertainer, gestures animatedly toward a wicker cage housing a marmot or a similar small animal. The woman holding a child in her arms leans forward seemingly intrigued. While Rembrandt rarely treated genre subjects, he did take an interest in street life, depicting such everyday people in a social context. This drawing, probably by one of Rembrandt’s many pupils, is done in the prevalent reed-pen-and-ink technique; the embellishments in gray wash are by a later hand.

Artist

School of Rembrandt van Rijn

Date

mid-17th century

Medium

Reed pen and brown ink, pen and gray washes; verso in pen and dark brown ink.

Culture

Dutch

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975