Study of an Old Man

After learning the fundamentals of drawing and painting in his native Leiden, Rembrandt van Rijn went to Amsterdam in 1624 to study for six months with Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), a famous history painter. Upon completion of his training Rembrandt returned to Leiden. Around 1632 he moved to Amsterdam, quickly establishing himself as the town’s leading artist, specializing in history paintings and portraiture. He received many commissions and attracted a number of students who came to learn his method of painting.

This study of an old bearded man with a sad, forlorn expression is one of a large number of rapidly executed oil sketches introduced into Rembrandt's oeuvre in the early years of the twentieth century. The painting appeared on the London art market in 1905 as a Rembrandt. A few years later a Rembrandt scholar dated it about 1645 and emphasized the painting's "broad, powerful brushwork and deep thoughtful expression which characterize [Rembrandt’s] later style." In most subsequent catalogs of Rembrandt's oeuvre, however, this painting has been doubted, rejected, or omitted entirely. The National Gallery of Art changed its attribution to "Style of Rembrandt" in 1984. X-radiographs reveal that the head is painted over another painting of a head of a man, seen in profile and wearing a hat. The head visible today was almost certainly executed on an old panel after Rembrandt's death, in emulation, or imitation, of the master's work.

Credit: Widener Collection