Some of Rembrandt’s most powerful paintings – especially those made later in his life – are of men and women immersed in thought, depicted with bold brushwork and dramatic, shadowy light effects. Slumped sideways across a chair, one hand gripping the wooden arm and the other resting lightly on his temple, this elderly man is in just such a mood. His eyes are cast down towards the floor, and the light which slants across his body from behind his left shoulder throws them into a deep shade. This is not a portrait of an individual but a study of a ‘character type’, a genre of painting that lends itself to experimentation far more than would a formal portrait. And this picture does seem to be highly experimental.
Rembrandt has captured the gleam on the man’s fingernail and the dry skin of his wrist with simple dabs and flecks of white paint. Bright white and yellow pigments evoke the shimmer on the fur collar and on the patch of yellow silk or satin next to it. These highlights, together with the man’s balding head, the fuzz of greying hair, the upper part of his face and the wooden upright of the chair immediately behind are the only parts of the painting which have been articulated with precision. Although they have been evoked economically in places, with relatively few brushstrokes, they remain convincing even when we look quite closely at the painting. The rest of the picture is much more roughly sketched in. The highlights on the left sleeve, for example, are depicted with only half a dozen very broad brushstrokes. We have to stand well back from the canvas for the illusion to work.
This highly suggestive, sometimes quite rough, style of painting was very innovative for the time, and it was an approach which became more typical of Rembrandt’s work as he grew older. However, some studies have argued that inconsistencies – and some perceived clumsiness – in the painting style do not amount to experimentation. And they point to some unusual use of pigments that raise questions over the painting’s authorship, suggesting that, even though Rembrandt has apparently signed and dated (1652) the picture himself in the top left-hand corner, it may be at least partly by a contemporary pupil or follower. In seventeenth-century Holland, a signature did not necessarily guarantee authorship in the way we think of it today. Rembrandt employed several apprentices who were encouraged to copy his paintings and to create their own independent compositions inspired by motifs or themes borrowed from his original works. While still apprentices, pupils were not allowed to sign their works; some of their better efforts may have been signed by their master before leaving the studio.
It is hard to believe that a painter would have taken such a bold and innovative approach when attempting to imitate the style of his master, and it has recently been convincingly proposed that this work does indeed represent an important early and experimental step in Rembrandt’s development towards the rough manner of his later works.
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