State atlas

One plate, one to four states

How many states this plate has depends entirely on which catalogue you are reading, and the answer ranges from one to four. That is not a bibliographic quibble: a description reading “state III of IV” is unintelligible in three of the five catalogues in common use for this print, and it is precisely the description attached to NP-RMB-001. This atlas sets out what each state is said to look like, which impressions are catalogued in it, and — for one state — the fact that no source the project could reach describes it at all.

How many states does this plate have?

Five citations, three different answers, all of them from published catalogues or major print rooms. This is not a defect in the sources; it is what the state of cataloguing for this plate actually looks like.

Catalogue	States	Evidence	Checked
Bartsch, 1797	1	The Rijksmuseum renders the reference as “Bartsch 20-1(1)” — state 1 of 1.	Rijksmuseum
Hollstein, original series	1	The Rijksmuseum renders the reference as “Hollstein Dutch 20-1(1)”.	Rijksmuseum
White & Boon, 1969	1	The National Gallery of Art's catalogue raisonné field reads verbatim: “White/Boon 1969, no. 20, State only.” “State only” means no state divisions were recognised.	National Gallery of Art
New Hollstein, as cited by the National Gallery of Art	3	The NGA record's bibliography entry cites “The New Hollstein … no. 170, state ii/iii” — a three-state reading of the same catalogue that the British Museum and the Rijksmuseum read as four.Interpretation, not a findingThe NGA citation points at the open-ended serial publication rather than at the completed Rembrandt volumes, so this is most likely an interim reading that was later superseded. That explanation is plausible and is not documented; it is recorded here as an interpretation, not a finding.	National Gallery of Art
New Hollstein, Rembrandt (Hinterding & Rutgers)	4	The British Museum cites impressions as “New Hollstein 170.II” and “170.IV”; the Rijksmuseum renders its impressions “170-1(4)”, “170-2(4)” and “170-4(4)”.	British Museum and Rijksmuseum

The four states of New Hollstein (Hinterding & Rutgers, Rembrandt)

What each is said to look like, and where that description comes from.

Before the jaw is strengthened

The earliest state. The signature and date are already in the plate, upper left: “Rembrandt f. 1638”. The state is defined negatively, by what has not yet happened — the chin and jaw below the left ear have not been strengthened. No source the project could reach prints a positive description of state I; the characterisation here is inferred from the description of state II and should be checked against the printed catalogue entry.

What to look for

Signature and date present in the plate, upper left
Chin and jaw below the left ear not yet delineated
No cross-hatching in the beret above the plume

Signature

Present

CaveatThe Rijksmuseum record gives the state designation and records the inscription, but does not print a description of what distinguishes state I. The negative characterisation is an inference.

Rijksmuseum RP-P-1961-989, catalogued New Hollstein 170-1(4)

The jaw delineated

The British Museum's curatorial description, used verbatim for two separate impressions, is “second state with jaw delineated”. Expanded, the chin below the left ear is now clearly defined, and the beret above the plume has not yet been cross-hatched. The signature remains present. This is the best-attested state in the census: it accounts for more recorded impressions than any other.

What to look for

Chin below the left ear clearly defined
Before the cross-hatching in the beret above the plume
Signature and date present

Signature

Present

British Museum 1910,0212.376 and F,4.25, both catalogued New Hollstein 170.II

III

Not described in any source the project could reach

undescribed

No collection record, published description or accessible catalogue transcription retrieved by this project describes state III, and no impression catalogued as 170.III was located in any collection searched. What can be said is bounded: state II is defined as being before the cross-hatching in the beret above the plume, so state III is where that cross-hatching should appear. That is an inference from the neighbouring definition, not a documented description, and it is recorded as an inference. Resolving it requires the printed New Hollstein entry for no. 170, which the project does not hold.

What to look for

Inferred: cross-hatching added to the beret above the plume
Position in the sequence: after the jaw is delineated, before the plate is reworked for the Basan re-issue

Signature

Not documented. Since state IV is defined by the signature being redrawn, the signature must have degraded on the plate at some point before that rework — which is consistent with a late state III showing a faint or broken signature, though no source states this.

CaveatThis is the weakest link in the sequence, and it is exactly the state the working record claims for NP-RMB-001. Any determination of “state III” for this sheet currently rests on a description nobody can check. See RQ-02.

No source located.

The signature redrawn, for the Basan re-issue

“Fourth state with signature redrawn; from an edition of the Recueil published by Henri Louis Basan around 1810.” The British Museum credits the plate rework to François Basan and the publication to Henri Louis Basan, Paris. The Rijksmuseum's impression in this state is likewise associated with the Basan workshop and with a later nineteenth-century printing. State IV is therefore posthumous by definition: it exists because someone reworked Rembrandt's plate roughly a century and a half after his death in order to print it again.

What to look for

Signature redrawn rather than original
Associated with the Recueil Basan, published in Paris around 1810
Plate rework attributed to François Basan

Signature

Present, but redrawn

British Museum 1941,0327.11.3, catalogued New Hollstein 170.IV

Why this page exists

A state atlas is the thing that makes a state attribution checkable. Without one, “state III” is a label somebody applied, and the only way to test it is to find the person who applied it and ask what they were looking at.

This atlas is incomplete, and its most conspicuous gap is the state that matters most to this project. That is not a comfortable thing to publish on a page about your own object, and publishing it is the point: the alternative is a record that looks more confident than the evidence behind it.

Two things would complete it. The printed New Hollstein entry for no. 170, which would give the catalogue’s own state descriptions. And a high-resolution image of an impression securely catalogued as state III, against which the described features could be checked. If you have access to either, please get in touch.