Description:

pen and black ink and brush and grey wash
330 x 210 mm

Provenance:

Probably J.D. Pompe van Meerdervoort, Dordrecht, or Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), Amsterdam
Probably their sale, Amsterdam, Verkolje...Bosch, 15 October 1749 [one of 100 drawings by Hoet in sale]
Probably J. Bessant
Probably his sale, Gerard, London: 22 January 1783, lot 57 [“sixty-eight, History of the Bible, by Hoet, on coloured India paper”]
Private collection, Nottinghamshire

Note:

Engraved: Joseph Mulder, Figures de la Bible, I, The Hague, 1728, p. 28.

This print study illustrates a passage from Genesis (17:23), wherein the Lord commands Abraham to circumcise his son, Ishmael, and all the men of his house: "And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him."

The drawing, produced around 1705, belongs to a series of Old Testament illustrations made by Gerard Hoet for François Halma’s Bible. The Bible was first published in five languages in Amsterdam in 1709, with a selection of drawings by Hoet engraved by Joseph Mulder. However, the entire collection of engravings after Hoet’s designs was only published in 1728 in the Hague by Pieter de Hondt, complete with further additions by Arnold Houbraken and Bernard Picart. The three-volume project, Taferelen der voornaamste geschiedenissen van het Oude en Nieuwe Testament or Figures de la Bible, was compiled by Jacques Saurin. The present drawing is engraved on page 28 of volume I.

Other drawings from the series are in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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