Rembrandt van Rijn - Portrait of an Old Man 1632
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Portrait of an Old Man 1632
66x50cm oil on panel oak
Harvard Art Museums, Massachusetts, Cambridge, United States
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Harvard Art Museums, Massachusetts:
Not a formal portrait, but a study of a generic type and emotional expression, this painting dates to a period shortly after the artist left his native Leiden and settled in Amsterdam. It shows the dramatic lighting and painstaking description of detail and texture that inform his early work. Rembrandt and his contemporary Jan Lievens painted head studies of this kind — from male and female models, young and old — when both worked in Leiden, but Rembrandt continued to produce them throughout his career. In their informality, they acknowledge their derivation from a type of studio exercise, yet many are highly finished, signed and dated, and were sold to collectors. The signature, which Rembrandt used in this form only in 1632, consists of the monogram RHL — an abbreviation of Rembrandt Harmenszoon Leydensis (Rembrandt, son of Harmen, from Leiden) — followed by his surname.