REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Self Portrait in a Cap and Scarf with the Face Dark: Bust.
Etching, 1633. 132x103 mm; 5¼x4 inches, narrow to thread margins. Biörklund's third state (of 3); Usticke's third state (of 5); White and Boon's second state (of 2); New Hollstein's third state (of 5). A very good, well-inked impression.
Provenance: Unidentified collector, entwined initials in ink, lower right recto (not in Lugt).
Rembrandt (1606-1669) etched some 30 self-portraits, with 27 singular images of himself and several others of himself in different guises or grouped with other portrait studies. This etching, created at the age of 27, two years after he had moved to Amsterdam from Leyden to establish himself as an independent artist, and just months before he married Saskia van Uylenburgh (the first cousin of the art dealer and print publisher Hendrick van Uylenburgh), is among Rembrandt's most introspective self-portraits. The dark shading covering much of his face, which rapidly disappears in later impressions, the deep-set eyes and the quiet, hunched pose lend it a reserved appearance, which is markedly different from the proud, well-lit, frontal poses of his subsequent self-portraits from the mid-to-late-1630s, as his stature as a foremost Dutch artist was rising. Bartsch 17; Biörklund 33-G; Hollstein (White and Boon) 17; New Hollstein 120.
