Bust of a man with a collar and a feathered beret

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Bust of a man with a collar and a plumed beret (Rembrandt van Rijn)
Bust of a man with a collar and a feathered beret
Rembrandt van Rijn , ca.1626
Oil on oak
39.8 x 29.4 cm
Privately owned

The bust of a man with a collar and a feathered beret is an oil painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn . The work is executed in portrait format on oak and was the earliest surviving portrait of Rembrandt painted around 1626. It is stylistically closely related to Rembrandt's other early works. After speculations about the identity of the man portrayed, the prevailing opinion today is that the picture is one of Rembrandt's numerous tronies .

description

The painting shows a middle-aged man, turned to the left, with curly brown curly hair that does not quite reach his shoulders and a thin mustache, who turns his head and looks over his left shoulder in the direction of the viewer. He wears a salmon-red cloak over a yellow-brown leather jacket, the blue lining of which is visible as a narrow stripe. He wears an iron collar and an olive-green sash that runs from the right shoulder under the cloak to the left hip. The left arm is covered by the cloak, the hilt of a rapier or mace protrudes from between the right arm and the man's upper body . The headgear is decorated with a blue-gray velvet beret notched all around the edge, each with a large white and green feather. Due to the light falling from the top left, the beret casts a shadow over the man's right eye, while the left half of the face is illuminated. Cracked gray masonry is shown in the background, with the signature RH on it to the right of the beret . v Rin. This signature is unusual and was undoubtedly added later by an unknown hand.

Although the picture as a portrait of a single person is unique in Rembrandt's early work, a number of parallels to other works by the young Rembrandt can be identified, which all together have dispelled any doubts about the authenticity of the painting. The left eye of the person portrayed shows an unusual transverse crescent-shaped reflection, which can also be found in Rembrandt's history painting with the painter's self-portrait in the eyes of the secretary, the second man kneeling and the man with a raised hand. These two paintings also have several peculiarities in the clothes of the depicted figures in common, such as the beret with a notched rim and two different colored feathers. The way in which the mustache and the stubble were scratched into the paint corresponds to the procedure in the Berlin money changer of 1627. The strong incidence of light and the cast shadow it causes are reminiscent of the stoning of St. Stephen and the music-making society .

Bust of an old man , Jan Lievens , oil on panel, 53 × 40.5 cm, 1624, Museum der bildenden Künste , Leipzig

The painting has the format 39.8 × 29.4 cm and is painted with oil paint on oak wood with vertical grain. The base consists of a single board nine millimeters thick on the right and three millimeters on the left. A piece measuring 2.6 × 29.4 cm has been added to the lower left, and a crack about eight centimeters long is located on the upper edge about three centimeters from the left edge. There are a few holes at the top and bottom, possibly nail holes, some of which go through and around which some paint and varnish is missing. Below the painting is an earlier depiction that was painted over and recognized on an X-ray as a portrait of a bald, bearded old man with bowed head looking to the left. It cannot be determined whether it was a painting by Rembrandt or the work of another painter. The style of the painted over portrait is reminiscent of portraits of old men by Jan Lievens, for example the bust of an old man in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig. It was speculated that Rembrandt might have painted the portrait over a discarded picture of Lievens. There is no evidence of this, but it cannot be ruled out. For Rembrandt's Simson and Delila in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin it was found that the wood for a self-portrait by Jan Lievens came from the same tree. Apparently, in contrast to the Basel David handing Goliath's head over to King Saul or to Berlin's Minerva , no attempts were made to remove the old layer of paint. The primer is therefore not visible, and the relief of the old application of paint can be seen in several places on the man with the collar .

The picture is in pretty good condition, although it has been affected by a large number of retouching. These were partly undertaken to correct any color loss that had occurred, and partly to prevent parts of the original painting from showing through.

background

In 1620 Rembrandt began a three-and-a-half year training with Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh in Leiden, who is known for his depictions of hell and who possibly brought Rembrandt closer to the effects of light. In 1624 Rembrandt went to Amsterdam and studied with Pieter Lastman for half a year . Rembrandt's earliest known works are the five-part cycle The Five Senses and Christ Expels the Money Changers from the Temple , followed by several religious and history paintings. The bust of a man with a collar and a feathered beret is the earliest Rembrandt portrait of a single person. At the same time, it is the prototype for numerous other portraits and tronies that Rembrandt painted over the next forty years, and in which the models depicted in half-profile turn towards the viewer.

reception

The first publications about the painting were a catalog and an article in an art magazine about the exhibition of paintings from Rechnitz Castle , which took place from 1930 to 1931 in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. In the catalog raisonné by Abraham Bredius published in 1936, the painting with the number 132 is listed as authentic. In the picture section, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Schloss Rechnitz is given as the owner, while the notes section states that the picture comes from a private collection in Brussels. Even Kurt Bauch led the painting in 1966 with the # 109. To be authentic. In 1968 Horst Gerson assigned No. 28 in his own catalog raisonné and kept no.132 in his revision of Bredius's catalog. The employees of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) also considered the work in 1982 in the first volume of their Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings to be authentic and gave it the number A 8. Christian Tümpel followed in 1986 and awarded the number 126. In the sixth volume of the Corpus received it was No. 6 in 2015.

In his monograph on Rembrandt's early work, Kurt Bauch speculated that the person depicted could be Rembrandt's brother Adriaen. This was rejected by experts as unfounded. Today, the prevailing belief is that the figure's clothing does not suit a contemporary Dutch soldier and that the mustache , which was exotic for the time, speaks for an early Tronie . It is undisputed that the portrait was painted from a living model. As far as the furnishings are concerned, contemporary images of the figure Il Capitano from the Italian Commedia dell'arte were pointed out as possible models. Other authors refer to German woodcuts from the 16th century that show mercenaries and rice peasants in extravagant costumes. Rembrandt owned such woodcuts in 1656, and they may have been known to him as a youth.

Copy

In a private collection in the United States there is an oil on wood copy measuring 39.5 × 33 cm. This copy was auctioned on May 25, 1952 as lot 148 by Christie's in London, at the time it was considered a painting by Willem de Poorter . After the auction, the painting by Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner was identified as an original by Rembrandt. However, this view remained an individual opinion and was refuted by the Rembrandt Research Project. The picture first came into the possession of the New York art dealer Mortimer Brandt and appeared in March 1954 as a color image on the cover of the American magazine The Connoisseur . Due to the brushwork and the quality as a whole, the copy is considered a free imitation, the painter of which had no connection to Rembrandt or his workshop.

Provenance

According to a report by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot , which he had created for Jacques Goudstikker in February 1929 , the portrait was formerly in the possession of Leo Nardus and, after his emigration to Tunisia, with the Dutch art dealer Arnold van Buuren . He sold it to his colleagues Böhler & Goudstikker. From 1930 to 1937 it is recorded in the collection of Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza at Castle Rechnitz (in contemporary literature it is also referred to as Castle Rohoncz). Thyssen took the painting to the Villa Favorita in Lugano and bequeathed it to his daughter Margit von Batthyány in 1947 . Before 1954 the painting came into the possession of the Swiss collector JH van Stratum.

On March 29, 1974, the painting was offered at an auction by Christie’s in London on behalf of van Stratum , but remained unsold. In 2000 it was exhibited on loan from New York collectors Herman and Lila Shickman in the Mauritshuis in The Hague . It later came into the possession of the Dutch art dealer Robert Noortman . In April 2002 it was bought by the Belgian couple Pieter and Olga Dreesmann.

On July 3, 2012, the painting, along with other images from the Dreesmann Collection, was auctioned off at Christie's in London as the top piece. The estimated price was eight to twelve million pounds sterling . The hammer price was 7.5 million pounds (9.32 million euros), which, including the premium, corresponded to a price of 8.44 million pounds (10.5 million euros).

Exhibitions (chronological)

  • Neue Pinakothek , Munich, Germany. Exhibition of the Rohoncz Castle Collection. Painting , 1930 to 1931
  • Museum De Lakenhal , Leiden, Netherlands. Exhibition Rembrandt as Leermeester , June 1 to September 1, 1956
  • Kunstmuseum Basel , Switzerland. Exhibition In the Light of Holland. Dutch painting of the 17th century from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein and from Swiss property , 14 July to 27 September 1987
  • National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne, Australia. Exhibition Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact , October 1 to December 17, 1997
  • National Gallery of Australia , Canberra, Australia. Exhibition Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact , December 17, 1997 to February 15, 1998
  • Mauritshuis , The Hague, Netherlands. Exhibition Zomerpresentatie: Ontmoetingen in het Mauritshuis / Summer Presentation: Face to Face at the Mauritshuis , April 15 to September 10, 2000
  • Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister , Kassel, Germany. Exhibition The young Rembrandt. Mystery of its beginnings , November 3, 2001 to January 27, 2002
  • Rembrandthuis , Amsterdam, Netherlands. Exhibition Het mysterie van de jonge Rembrandt , February 20 to May 26, 2002
  • Städelsches Kunstinstitut , Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Exhibition Rembrandt Rembrandt , February 1 to May 11, 2003
  • Graphic Collection Albertina , Vienna, Austria. Rembrandt exhibition , March 26 to June 27, 2004
  • Van Gogh Museum , Amsterdam, Netherlands. Exhibition Rembrandt - Caravaggio , February 24 to June 18, 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Ed.): A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. VI. Rembrandt's Paintings Revisited. A Complete Survey. Springer Science + Business Media, Dordrecht 2015, ISBN 978-94-017-9173-1 , pp. 481-482.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Ed.): A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. I. 1625-1631. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag, Boston, London 1982, ISBN 978-94-009-7519-4 , Work A 8 Bust of a man in a gorget and cap , pp. 124-128.
  3. ^ Vitale Bloch: On the early Rembrandt . In: Oud Holland - Journal for Art of the Low Countries , 1933, Volume 50, No. 1, pp. 97-102, doi: 10.1163 / 187501733X00168 .
  4. ^ Ernst van de Wetering: Rembrandt, a biography. In: Gemäldegalerie der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8321-7694-2 , pp. 21–49.
  5. ↑ a b c d Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Leiden 1606-1669 Amsterdam), A man in a gorget and cap , website of Christie’s London, lot 24 of the Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale on July 3, 2012, accessed on August 30, 2019.
  6. ↑ Abraham Bredius : Rembrandt. Schilderijen. W. de Haan, Utrecht 1935, digitized version, Heidelberg University Library . German: Rembrandt. Painting. Phaidon-Verlag, Vienna 1935. English: The Paintings of Rembrandt. London 1937 (cited as Bredius ), work no.532.
  7. ↑ Kurt Bauch : Rembrandt. Painting. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1966, reprint 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-005007-3 , No. 42.
  8. ^ Horst Gerson: Rembrandt paintings. Meulenhoff International, Amsterdam 1968. German: Rembrandt paintings. Complete works. Vollmer, Wiesbaden 1968, work no.5.
  9. ↑ Abraham Bredius : Rembrandt. The complete edition of the paintings. Third edition. Revised by Horst Gerson. Phaidon, London 1969, ISBN 0-7148-1341-9 , work no.532.
  10. ^ Christian Tümpel : Rembrandt. Myth and Method. With contributions by Astrid Tümpel . Mercatorfonds, Antwerp 1986, ISBN 90-6153-165-9 , work no.34 .
  11. ↑ Frederic Schwartz: "The Motions of the Countenance". Rembrandt's Early Portraits and the Tronie. In: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 1989, No. 17/18, pp. 89-116, JSTOR 20166816 .
  12. ↑ Cornelis Hofstede de Groot : unpublished report from February 1929 on the website of the RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis, accessed on August 30, 2019.
  13. ↑ a b Rembrandt, Man in a gorget and a feathered cap, 1626/1627 on the RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis website , accessed on August 30, 2019.
  14. ^ Judith Benhamou-Huet: Portrait d'un collectionneur: Pieter CWM Dreesmann, de père en fils mais jamais la même chose , Les Echos , June 2, 2006, accessed on August 30, 2019.