?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 80,000
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Ephraim Bonus, Jewish Physician.
Etching and drypoint, 1647. 221x178 mm; 8 3/4x7 inches, thread margins. Biörklund's second state (of 2); Usticke's first state (e) (of l); White and Boon's second state (of 2). Ex-collection Bernhard Keller (Lugt 384); Henry F. Sewall (Lugt 1309); unknown collector, indiscernible letter "H" ink stamp (possibly Lugt 1279, lower right recto); the Albertina, Vienna (Lugt 5g, verso), sold through Boerner, Leipzig, May 3, 1932, lot 73; Anderson Galleries, New York; G. W. Nowell-Usticke, author of one of the standard catalogues raisonné of Rembrandt's etchings, his sale Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, November 1, 1967, lot 178; to the current owner. A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce portrait, with strong burr on the ring and right hand, on the banisters and with traces of burr throughout, with no sign of wear, consistent with the earliest impressions of this subject.
We have found approximately only 20 other impressions at auction in the past 25 years.
"The physician and writer Ephraïm Hezekiah Bueno (1599-1665), also known by the Latinized name Bonus, came from a Portugese Jewish family that had already produced a number of renonwed doctors," according to Hinterding, "Bueno wrote poems in Spanish, made translations, and was also an important backer of the Jewish printing-house run by Samuel Menasseh ben Israel, as well as being one of its customers," (Rembrandt the Printmaker, London, 2000, page 227). Menasseh ben Israel was Rembrandt's neighbor in Amsterdam (as well as the subject of another etched portrait by Rembrandt) and it was likely he who introduced Rembrandt to Bueno.
This is one of only a few etched portraits by Rembrandt for which he also made oil studies (another is Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing Master: larger plate, etching, circa 1658, see lot 166). The small oil portrait of Bueno, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, shows the doctor in roughly the same pose, albeit in reverse. One significant difference between the two portraits is that in the oil study Bueno's gaze is fixed directly at the viewer whereas in the etching he stares off to the right, giving him a more thoughtful, distant expression. Bartsch 278; Biörklund 47-A; Hollstein (White and Boon) 278.
