A new Rembrandt for the British Museum

18/1/24 - Acquisition - London, British Museum - Every year, Arts Council England’s rich report on works acquired by British museums through the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) Scheme or the Cultural Gifts Scheme (CGS) - the UK equivalent of our dations - reveals some very nice surprises, the most important of which for lovers of old masters is obviously the arrival of a very fine drawing by Rembrandt (ill. 1) in the collections of the British Museum in London.

1. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
A baby Sleeping in its Cradle, circa 1645
Black chalk - 7.5 x 11.2 cm
London, The British Museum
Photo: British Museum

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As the institution points out in its own press release, the sheet has thus joined an enviable group of seventy-two other drawings and over a thousand prints by Rembrandt himself, not to mention his entourage and pupils!
This touching portrait of a baby, drawn on the spot with a sure hand in black chalk, this moving Baby Sleeping in its Cradle could easily have featured in the "Children of the Golden Age" exhibition organised by the Fondation Custodia in the summer of 2019 (see article), but above all in the exhibition "From Drawing to Painting in the Century of Rembrandt" presented on the rue de Lille at the beginning of 2017 (see article) after an initial American stop at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. There we admired the relevant juxtapositions between studies and finished works, as we would dream of being able to do with the newly-acquired drawing and the canvas (ill. 2) he is preparing! This baby in its cradle can be seen on the left of the famous Holy Family acquired by Catherine II with the Crozat collection in 1772.

2. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
The Holy Family, 1645
Oil on canvas - 117 x 91
Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum
Photo: Google Art Project

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Kept in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg since the end of the 17th-century, this…