Seated Female Nude1660/62
A nude woman sits on a low stool, her head bowed, drawn with a few rapid pen lines and broad sweeps of brown wash. More about this work
About this work
A nude woman sits on a low stool, her head bowed, drawn with a few rapid pen lines and broad sweeps of brown wash. Rembrandt drew from the model with his pupils in the studio, and he rejected the idealised bodies of classical art in favour of real, unglamorous flesh, a choice that troubled some later critics. Scraped highlights and touches of white correction show him reworking the sheet as he went, capturing the weight of the body and the fall of light with startling economy.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
Brown-tone drawing of a nude woman seated on a small stool, looking downward.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Watercolour
- Pigment in gum arabic, thinned with water and laid in transparent washes. Nothing white is painted: the light is the paper showing through.
- Pen and ink
- Drawn with a quill or reed pen, often with wash added by brush to model light and shadow.
- Laid paper
- Handmade on a mould of close-set wires, which leave fine parallel lines you can see when the sheet is held to the light.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch, 1606–1669 · Born in Leiden; died in Amsterdam.
Rembrandt trained in Leiden and Amsterdam, settled in Amsterdam in the early 1630s and became the city’s most sought-after portraitist. His later work grows rougher and more searching, with thick paint, deep shadow and faces that seem lost in thought, as in Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, painted for a Sicilian collector. He was also the leading etcher of his age, reworking plates through many states and making the medium as expressive as painting.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1953.38
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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