An album of drawings given to the Rijksmuseum brings Rombout Uylenburgh out of the shadows

20/8/26 - Acquisition - Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum - The recent donation to the Rijksmuseum of a seventeenth-century album of drawings by the Van Eeghen family (ill. 1), originally from Amsterdam, which had been in their possession for more than three centuries, provides an opportunity to discuss an artist so little known that he does not even have a Wikipedia page, not even in Dutch. We also discovered on this occasion that the Rembrandt House Museum has acquired two paintings by his hand in recent years, acquisitions that we had not previously mentioned, an omission which we can therefore rectify today.

The RKD Studies website had published online a very thorough article by Erik P. Löffler about this album, when it was still in the donors’ possession.
It reveals that, of the 27 drawings, sixteen [1] (ill. 2 to 17) can be attributed, with some reservations, to Rombout Uylenburgh with the assistance of his workshop — some being by other artists. We shall return later to these other sheets and shall first examine those on which the Rijksmuseum has focused its publicity.