An etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, “Adam and Eve” (click on the left picture to see an enlarged version), has been stolen from an art gallery in Chicago. The suspected thieves are a couple who had briefly entered the gallery and left it, taken the etching with them. The etching dates from 1638 and is worth around 60′000 US$.

In some news articles the stolen print is labeled as “an engraving”, which is not correct. It is an etching. When you have a closer look at the full size version (click on the small picture above), you will discover a nice detail in the background: a small elephant. It is Hansken (1630-1655), an elephant which was shown across Europe in the 17th century.

Rembrandt van Rijn: Hansken (drawing, 1637)

An anonymous copper engraving from the 17th century shows Hansken’s manifold skills, which may also have impressed Rembrandt to include her (Hansken was a lady elephant) in a scene from the Bible.

Links:

Hilligoss Galleries in Chicago including a picture of the stolen item

Rembrandt stolen from Mag Mile gallery (Chicago Tribune) and followup.

17th Century Rembrandt Etching Stolen From Chicago Gallery (FoxNews)

Once in a while, we would like to point to some outstanding examples of online galleries, which consist of more than just some selected reproductions of famous prints, but which offer some added value

This time, it is the ImageBase of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Not only does it contain engravings and etchings of almost all the old masters, it also allows to browse through the extensive collection of 85′000 images (not only prints, to be honest). It is an example of a well considered and simple, but neatly designed presentation of the images.

The images are presented with detailed informations about artist, title and bibliographical links. The most exciting feature though are the zoomable pictures. This is a precious feature when examining details of an engraving or etching. As an example, take a look at the engraving L’observateur distrait by the German artist Johan Georg Wille (1715-1808), which is a charming variation of our Homo bulla theme. Click on “Zoom this image” to, well, zoom into the image in order to explore the fine details of the engraving.

An useful hint for bloggers with the need to offer a similar feature for their online galleries: Zoomify EZ is a free Shockwave tool for splitting up a picture into tiles for a fast online zooming experience.

A short postscriptum to our last post: we referred to the French engraver of the print after van Mieris as “Mathieu Blot“, as the inscription in the lower right corner of the engraving suggests:

Now, in the literature we can’t find an engraver named Mathieu Blot, he is always referred to as Maurice Blot.

Let’s first look at the trustworty Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes (1821):

“Blot (Maurice), graveur, né à Paris, en 1754, mort dans la même ville en 1818, élève d’Aug. de Saint Aubin, à gravé d’un fort bon style, et d’après différens maîtres. (Blot Maurice, born in Paris in 1754, died in the same city in 1818, pupil of Aug. de Saint Aubin, engraved in a strong, good manner and after several different masters)”.

Emile Dacier in his La Gravure Française (1944) writes (p. 148):

“Blot (Maurice), Paris (1753-1818). Élève d’Augustin de Saint-Aubin, il a joui pendant sa vie d’une grande reputation, grâce à des estampes d’après Aubry, Fragonard etc., [...] (Blot Maurice, pupil of d’Augustin de Saint-Aubin, he enjoyed big reputation during his lifetime because of his engravings after Aubry, Fragonard etc.)”

Arthur Hind in his A History of Engraving & Etching (p. 425, reprint of the 1923 edition):

“Blot, Maurice. Engraver. Paris 1753-1818″.

Even in the caption to an illustration of the very same engraving [1], the artist is called Maurice Blot. Now Maurice Blot is indeed known as the significant engraver of many works by Fragonard and others (see his engraving the Lock for example). There is no biographical information on a Mathieu Blot. So, who is he? A relative? Maurice signing under a different name? Why would he do that? We don’t know. So let’s adopt the opinion of the majority: the engraver is Maurice Blot.

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[1] Jean Siméon Chardin 1699-1779: Werk, Herkunft, Wirkung, 1999, Hatje Cantz, p. 354, Fig. 1.

At first sight, this lovely, rather small (18 x 23.5 cm) engraving just depicts a Genre scene of a boy blowing soap bubbles, with his mother standing smiling behind him. Let us explore why there may be something else luring behind than just a scene from an untroubled childhood.

The engraving is a mirrored copy of the painting A Boy blowing Bubbles, a subject which was executed several times by Dutch fijnschilder (”fine painter”) Franz van Mieris (1635-1681). Today, the painting can be admired in the Mauritshuis in The Hague [1].

Frans van Mieris, Boy blowing bubbles, 1663, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague.

At the end of the 18th century, the painting was part of the Picture Cabinet of the French Jean-Baptiste Pierre le Brun (1748-1813) in Paris. It was during this time when the French Mathieu Blot (1753-1818) produced his print, which was then sold by the Parisian print dealer Poignant (”Se vend à Paris chés Poignant M^ds. D’Estampes, rue et Hôtel Serpente). This was not the first reproduction of this painting: between 1676 and 1678 Dutch engraver Cornelis H. van Meurs had already produced one [2].

The engraving presented here reproduces in an itself virtuoso style the illusionistic picture space: we can discern the weathered state of the window frame and the surrounding wall. A snail is crawling towards the boy, who is self-forgettingly blowing his soap bubbles, while his mother is knowingly smiling towards the observer.

It is this weathered state of the window frame which provides us with a first hint towards the motto of this post. Time has left its traces in the decaying stone and wood objects. The snail seems to have started its long way from outside the picture space (in the original painting, it is crawling over the carved Roman numerals MDCLXIII = 1663). The sunflower was chosen because of its daily movement. And last but not least, the fragile soap bubbles exist only for a blink of an eye.

Mathieu Blot after Frans van Mieris, Boy blowing bubbles, etching and engraving, between 1778 and 1780, private collection.

In this sense, soap bubbles are associated with the transience of life. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch philosopher Erasmus reintroduced the Latin expression “Homo bulla” (”man is a bubble”) in his “Adagia”, a collection of sayings published in 1572. A vanitas etching by the Dutch Karel van Sichem (d. 1608), published 150 years earlier, shows a young boy sitting on a skull and blowing bubbles. “Homo” is written over one of them: a skull as the symbol of death and bubbles representing the transience of man’s life on Earth.

Karel van Sichem: Homo Bulla, around 1617 [4].

The lovingly smiling mother pointing knowlingly at her son may illustrate a further transient element: Even love is as fragile as a bubble and has to be approached with caution (the sunflower was also known as the “trumpet of love”) [5].

Did you notice the blueish color of the leaves in the painting, especially the sunflower leaves? The original green color was made of yellow and blue pigment. During the centuries, the yellow pigment has broken down, leaving only the blue. Even the painting itself is only a bubble in time…

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[1] Otto Naumann, Frans van Mieris The Elder (1635-1681), Monographs on Dutch & Flemish Paintings, Volume II: Catalogue & plates, Davaco: 1981, p. 70-76).

[2] Jean Siméon Chardin 1699-1779: Werk, Herkunft, Wirkung, 1999.

[3] Margaret Doyle, The Art of Frans van Mieris, National Gallery of Art, Washington, February 26 – May 21, 2006.

[4] Zacharias Heyns (?), Nievwen Ieucht Spieghel, Verciert met veel schonne nieuwe Figuren ende Liedekens te voren niet in druck gewest, The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 843 B 25.

[5] Naumann, pp. 75-76.