 | Museum Het Rembrandthuis Jodenbreestraat 4 1011 NK Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 20 520 0400 E museum@ museumrembrandthuis.nl Press Inquiries: press-office@museumrembrandthuis.nl |
Museum Het Rembrandthuis
Jodenbreestraat 4
1011 NK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T +31 20 520 0400
E museum@ museumrembrandthuis.nl
Press Inquiries: press-office@museumrembrandthuis.nl
Titus
The boy, who sits staring ahead, is lost in thought. His thumb presses
against his chin. There are some papers on the desk, and he holds a pen
in his right hand and a pen case in his left. That this is a portrait
of Rembrandt’s son, Titus, is not in doubt. An important clue to this
is that there are several other paintings by Rembrandt from the same
period that unmistakably show the same boy. There is, moreover, a
strong similarity between this work and the portrait etching of a boy
by Rembrandt, which a seventeenth-century source tells us is of Titus
(fig.2). In the print, Titus wears a beret just like the one in the
painting.
Titus, who was born in 1641, was the only one of Saskia and
Rembrandt’s children to live beyond infancy. Titus’s mother died less
than a year after his birth, and he was brought up by his father and by
Geertje Dircx. In 1649 Geertje’s place was taken by Hendrickje
Stoffels. We have virtually no information about Titus’s childhood. We
do, however, know that he was taught drawing and painting, undoubtedly
by his father. The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions that was
compiled in 1656 lists a couple of works by Titus. Once the bankruptcy
formalities were completed, the art dealing business was transferred
into the names of Hendrickje and Titus in order to keep the income from
it out of the hands of Rembrandt’s creditors. Titus was actively
engaged in the art business. In the biography of Rembrandt, written at
the beginning of the eighteenth century by the artist and writer Arnold
Houbraken, the author notes rather disparagingly that Titus hawked his
father’s prints around. When he was in Leiden in 1665, Titus tried to
win a commission for his father. On that occasion Titus proudly
extolled his father’s qualities. Three years later Titus was back in
Leiden. Mortally ill, he made his will and died shortly afterwards.
Rembrandt, Titus at his desk,
signed and dated ‘Rembrandt f. 1655’, canvas, 77 x 63 cm, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Br. 120).jpg "Titus(b11)")
Rembrandt, Portrait of Titus, c. 1656
tching, 9.9 x 7 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet
