Bathsheba

mythological

Willem Drost was a pupil of Rembrandt. His presence in Rembrandt's studio is undocumented, however, his works suggest that he had contact with the master in the late 1640s or early 1650s. Support for connecting him with Rembrandt is given by his sensuous, half-length Bathsheba dated 1654 which was unmistakable inspired by Rembrandt's superb painting done in the same year of the same subject, also in the Louvre, Paris.

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About the Artist

Willem Drost

1633 – 1659

Dutch painter, draughtsman and printmaker, possibly of German origin. Almost nothing is known of his life, and only half a dozen paintings (and an even smaller number of etchings) are recognized as being by him. According to Houbraken, he was a pupil of Rembrandt, possibly in or shortly before 1650. All the works that are dated are of the 1650s, and it would seem that at this time Drost was one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented followers. His earliest dated paintings are two pendants of 1653: the Portrait of a Man (New York, Metropolitan Museum) and the Portrait of a Woman (The Hague, Museum Bredius). An early etching signed w drost 1652 is probably a self-portrait, in which Drost portrayed himself as a young man drawing. His Portrait of a Young Man in the Wallace Collection, London, bears a false Rembrandt signature.

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