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Overview
During his lifetime, Rembrandt's extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands, and it also explains why, three centuries later, they were affordable for Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott, who presented 37 Rembrandt prints, including this one, to the National Art Gallery between 1952 and 1969.
In the years after 1630, Rembrandt made a series of red chalk drawings of imposing old men. Some of these subjects were later used in paintings of biblical subjects or of meditating men. The drawings are connected with several etchings by Rembrandt, seven of which, including this work, are currently in Te Papa's collection. These are known as tronies, the Dutch word at the time for a face. Typically these are heads or busts only, concentrating on the facial expression, but often half-length when featured in an exotic costume. Tronies might be based on studies from life or use the features of actual sitters. Both paintings and prints of this kind were sold on the art market without identification of the sitter, and were not commissioned and retained by the sitter as portraits normally were. Rembrandt's tronies were among his most popular and widely imitated prints.
The subject of this etching is frequently identified as Rembrandt's father, who died the previous year (1630). Certainly this figure is neither as elderly nor as generously bearded as his 'brother' tronie. In this context, in her Te Papa blog on Rembrandt, former summer research scholar Anna Rigg writes:
He crafted his own myth with such success that people have always sought to find Rembrandt's personal life in his works. Te Papa's Bearded man, in a furred oriental cap and robe is traditionally said to be a portrait of the artist's father, despite no real evidence to support the claim. The print was possibly intended as a companion piece to The artist's mother seated, in an oriental headdress (not in Te Papa's collection). Again, the identification of the sitter as Rembrandt's mother is traditional and postdates the print by well over a century: it first appears in 1792, inscribed on the back of a copy by the artist Francesco Novelli, by which time the Rembrandt cult was thriving.
The downward gaze and fur cap of the 'father' was almost certainly an influence on Edouard Manet's Portrait of the Artist's Parents (1859-60; Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The asymmetry and large white void area almost anticipates Manet. Te Papa's impression is from the fifth and final state, all of which were by Rembrandt, with this state's characteristic cut-down plate.
References: New Hollstein Dutch 85, 5th of 5 states; Hollstein Dutch 263, 4th of 4 states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronie
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art August 2017