REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Self Portrait in a Cap and Scarf with the Face Dark: Bust.
Etching, 1633. 132x103 mm; 5 1/4x4 inches, narrow margins. Biörklund's third state (of 3); Usticke's third state (of 5); New Hollstein third state (of 5). A superb, richly-inked impression with little to no sign of wear, even in the most densely cross-hatched areas such as the shadow on the face, the beret and the cloak.
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 self-portrait, created at the age of 27, two years after he had moved to Amsterdam from Leyden to begin to establish himself as a successful independent artist, and months before he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, is among Rembrandt's most introspective self-renderings. The dark shading covering much of his face (which rapidly disappears in later impressions), the deep-set eyes and his quiet, hunched pose lend an almost shy, reserved appearance, which is markedly different from the proud, bright, frontal poses of his self-portraits from the mid-to-late-1630s. Bartsch 17; Biörklund 33-G; Hollstein (White and Boon) 17.
