Bust of an old bearded man, looking down, three quarters right.

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, centuries later, they were affordable for Bishop Ditlev Monrad and Sir John Ilott. They presented their Rembrandts to the Colonial Museum and the National Art Gallery respectively, and Te Papa has inherited these collections.

 

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 figures. This series of chalk drawings is 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.

 

This etching is one of the earliest in the series, dating from the year of Rembrandt's move from his native Leiden to Amsterdam, a rising star of Dutch art then in his mid-twenties. Unlike the majority of the tronies, the old man depicted here is bare-headed and wears nondescript, not formally finished, clothing; whereas a fur cloak and very often a fur hat are in evidence elsewhere. This enhances the timeless appeal of the study and his kinship with Michelangelo's spiritual, meditative Old Testament prophets in the Sistine Chapel. But here Rembrandt takes full advantage of showing his technical mastery of the etcher's needle. 

 

This impression, which had belonged to Monrad, is from the last of three states (all of which are by Rembrandt). The plate has been cut down and a vertical scratch is visible in the lower right corner, possibly caused by a crack in the copperplate according to New Hollstein, Rembrandt Vol. 1. According to the print dealer Christopher Mendez, this appears to be a relatively late impression of the third state.

 

References: New Hollstein Dutch 84, 3rd of 3 states; Hollstein Dutch 260, 3rd of 3 states

 

See:  New Hollstein, Rembrandt 1 (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel, Netherlands, 2013),

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronie

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    August 2017