Nov 02, 2023 - Sale 2651

Sale 2651 - Lot 47

Price Realized: $ 9,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
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); White and Boon's second state (of 2); New Hollstein's third state (of 5). A very good, well-inked impression with little to no sign of wear.

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.