206 Esther Fainting before Ahasuerus Pen and dark brown ink, brown and grey wash, red and yellow chalk, heightened with white bodycolour. Piece of paper added at the top left. Two pinholes, top left and top right. Verso: corners strengthened. Remains of a blue lining sheet or mount. 244 x 218 mm. Watermark: indefinable. Chain lines: 23-25 mm (v). Inscribed, lower right: hoogstraten (pen and brown ink); lower centre: 40 (pen and brown ink). Inscribed on verso, upper right: 100 (pen and brown ink). Provenance: V. Röver, Delft (posthumous catalogue, ca. 1739); sold by him in 1732; F.A. de Meuron; Galerie Artel, Luzern, bt. in 1925 for the Museum (f 80.-, together with a drawing by Jacob Maurer). Inv. no.: Q 58b. Exhibitions: New York/Chicago 1989, no. 75 (repr.). Bibliography: Sumowski 1963, p. 91; Sumowski 1965, p. 246, repr.; Van Gelder 1973, p. 196, note 34; Sumowski, Drawings, V (1981), pp. 2500-01, no. 1124*; Schatborn 1981, p. 53, note 139; Broos 1981, p. 136, under no. 37; Schatborn 1985, pp. 170-71, under no. 79, fig. 79b. After learning of Haman's plans to exterminate the Jews, Esther pleads for her people with her husband, the Persian king Ahasverus. His "great rage" at her interruption causes her to faint at his feet (Esther 15:6-8). Technically and stylistically, this sheet belongs to an extensive group of drawings of mostly biblical scenes, datable to the late 1640s and early 1650s (Sumowski, Drawings, V, nos. 1101-07, 1121*-31*). A large part of these drawings, including our sheet, was in the possession of Valerius Röver in the early eighteenth century; like our drawing, some of the Van Hoogstratens from his collection have a number on the recto. These numbers probably date from before Röver's time, as Robinson (exh. New York/Chicago 1989, pp. 117-18) suggested, since they do not correspond to the numbers in Röver's inventory and because one drawing which never seems to have been in his possession also bears such a number. Until recently it was assumed that No. 206 was a variant copy of a Rembrandt drawing in the Rijksprentenkabinet (cf. Sumowski, Drawings, V, under no. 1124*). Schatborn was able to establish, however, that the latter is neither an authentic Rembrandt, nor a direct copy after that master (Schatborn 1985, no. 79). Perhaps both works are based on a lost composition by Rembrandt.