The Rijksmuseum museum said that it had finally sniffed out a sketch that inspired the dog in Rembrandt’s iconinc « NightWatch » painting.
It didn’t exactly take dogged detective work for an art sleuth in Amsterdam to solve a canine conundrum dating back to the Dutch Golden Age.
Anne Lenders, a curator at the city’s landmark Rijksmuseum, said Tuesday that it was more or less by accident that she discovered that the barking dog in Rembrandt van Rijn’s famous « Night Watch » is a near-identical copy of one that features in a 1619 pen and ink drawing by fellow Dutch artist Adriaen van de Venne.
« I wasn’t looking for this; it was really unexpected », Lenders said in the glass room where « Night Watch » is undergoing extensive restoration.
She was visiting an exhibition at the Zeeuws Museum in the southern Netherlands when her eye fell on a picture of a dog by Van de Venne that was printed in a book by the poet Jacob Cats. The original drawing – which turned out to be part of the Rijksmuseum’s own vast collection – was also on display.
Using her phone to compare the two images side by side, the 39-year-old Dutchwoman saw « striking similarities » between van de Venne’s dog and the canine depicted in Rembrandt’s 1642 masterpiece.
