A long-haired young man wearing a large bowler hat sits facing us at an open window. Poised to draw or write on a blank page of a sketch- or notebook, he uses a goose quill cut to a fine point and holds an ink-well in his left hand [Fig. 21]. Due to perspectival distortion, his hands may seem a little too large. Light washes lend relief to his clothing and face. It is, I believe, a self-portrait, corresponding along general lines with what the young artist must have seen in a mirror, but with an added setting and the customary reversal to a lifelike right-handedness. The drawing was acquired as a self-portrait by the Fondation Custodia in Paris in 2012.

Versteegh, De Claussin and His de la Salle

It is remarkable that despite an old attribution to Samuel van Hoogstraten and a provenance that includes a few reputable Dutch and French collections, this appealing portrait has thus far escaped mention in the extensive literature about Rembrandt's students. The lower left of the drawing features a pseudo-signature in virtually the same eighteenth-century hand as that of an inscription on the back: ‘Samuel van Hoogstraten fecit’ [Fig. 21]. Numerous examples of the distinctive signature of young Samuel have come down to us, so that we can tell that these inscriptions are not in his hand. Nevertheless, the attribution is altogether convincing. In a letter to the Paris auction house that sold the drawing in 2010, Werner Sumowski reacted enthusiastically: ‘The drawing is by S. van Hoogstraten, an exceptionally beautiful sheet’.

The collector's mark ‘HL’, stamped within a circle at the lower right, belonged to Horace His de la Salle. According to a note on the back of the old frame, moreover, the sheet was once in the ‘Thureau-Dangin’ collection. The same combination of former owners also applies to Rembrandt's drawing The Men of Sodom at the House of Lot (Genesis 19, 1-11), which the Thureau- Dangin family lent out for an exhibition of 1908 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Anne-Louise Henriquel-Dupont (1843-1928), Mrs. Thureau-Dangin, was the daughter of Louis-Pierre Henriquel Dupont (1797-1892), better known as Henriquel, the first graphic artist to become commander in the Legion of Honour. At some still unknown date, her father must have procured the Rembrandt drawing from the collector His de la Salle.