Beggar in a high cap, standing and leaning on a stick.

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 Bishop Ditlev Monrad and here, Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott, who presented 37 Rembrandt prints to the National Art Gallery between 1952 and 1969.

This etching dates from 1629, when Rembrandt was just 23 and still living in Leiden, before his move to Amsterdam as one of the Netherlands' rising stars in art. As a young man, Rembrandt made many etchings of beggars and other denizens of the streets. They would come to inform the figures populating his complex biblical images. Notice two major precepts of Rembrandt's printmaking: he treated the copper etching plate as if it were a sketchpad, and he drew informally and intuitively, rejecting the formulaic approach taken by many professional printmakers.

The beggar depicted here is dressed in very ragged clothes; his body is leaning slightly forward; he is almost certainly toothless. Rembrandt makes no attempt to prettify him, stressing raw realism and pure drawing on the etching plate. The sense of a small bank in the landscape is conveyed by a near abstract pattern of intersecting line on the left; otherwise the plate is left alone.

This impression is the second of two states of the etching, both by Rembrandt. The plate edges have been smoothened and the corners rounded.

References: New Hollstein Dutch 41, 2nd of 2 states; Hollstein Dutch 162, only state

 

See:

Minneapolis Institute of Art, https://collections.artsmia.org/art/55076/beggar-in-a-high-cap-standing-and-leaning-on-a-stick-rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn

 

Thomas Wilson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Prints of Rembrandt (1836), p. 129.

 

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    August 2017