Object data
pen and brown ink, with grey wash; framing line in brown ink
height 127 mm × width 94 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Self-portrait with Tousled Hair
Leiden, c. 1628 - c. 1629
Inscriptions
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stamped: lower left, with the mark of Lawrence (L. 2445)
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inscribed on verso: lower left, by Esdaile, in brown ink (the last digit crossed out), P437
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stamped on verso: lower left (on a separate piece of paper adhered to the verso), with the mark of Hofstede de Groot (L. 561); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: Crown (fragment), close to Churchill, no. 274 (1622); Heawood, no. 546 (1607)
Condition
Light foxing throughout1
Provenance
...; ? collection Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), London;2 ? his sale, London (A.C. de Poggi), 26 May 1794, possibly one of the drawings by Rembrandt in Album QQ, nos. 960-85, or Album RR, nos. 987-1009 (drawings not specified); or his sale, London (H. Phillips), 5 March 1798 sqq. (drawings not specified); ...; collection Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), London (L. 2445); from whom, en bloc, £16,000, to the dealer Samuel Woodburn (1786-1853), London, 1835;3 ? from whom, with 99 other drawings by Rembrandt, £1,500, to William Esdaile (1758-1837), London, 1835;4 ? his sale, London (Christie’s), 17 June 1840, no. 58 (‘Rembrandt’s portrait, a slight sketch; from Sir Joshua Reynolds’s collection’), £0.13.0, to the dealer Samuel Woodburn, London;5 ...; collection Rudolph Hirsch Kann (1845-1905), Paris;6 ...; purchased from Edith Louise Ida Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1882-1969), Leipzig, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague (L. 561), 1924;7 his sale, Leipzig (C.G. Boerner), 4 November 1931, no. 160 (‘Jugendliches Selbstbildnis mit krausem Haar und kleinem Schnurrbart. Brustbild, leicht nach links, den Beschauer anblickend. 127:95. Feder in Braun und Pinsel in Schwarz. Aufgezogen.’), 7,000 DM, to the dealer Van Diemen & Co., Berlin;8 ...; collection Isaac de Bruijn (1872-1953) and his wife, Johanna Geertruida de Bruijn-van der Leeuw (1877-1960), Spiez and Muri, near Bern, by 1932;9 by whom donated to the museum, 1949, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1960
Object number: RP-T-1961-75
Credit line: De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
Entry
Artists made self-portraits for various reasons, but few artists chose their own face as a model as often as Rembrandt. His pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten, in his treatise on painting entitled Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (1678), recommended the following: ‘You can derive the same benefit from studying your own emotions, namely in front of a mirror, where you are at once both the performer and the viewer.’10 Self-portrait drawings generally served as studies for paintings and etchings, and indeed during his Leiden period (1625-31) Rembrandt made a series of etched self-portraits with extremely varied facial expressions. These were not only independent exercises in the representation of emotions; they could also be used as studies for figures in historical scenes. Some of his painted self-portraits had a similar function, while others were made as studies for later portraits or as models for his pupils.
Besides the Amsterdam drawing, there is another early, Leiden-period drawn self-portrait, now in the British Museum in London (inv. no. Gg,2.253).11 Some experts date these two drawings differently, but their similar style and technique (despite the presence of the beginnings of a beard and small moustache in the Amsterdam sheet) indicate that they were made at approximately the same time, circa 1628-29. In both cases, the head was first sketched with thin pen lines, then worked up with a brush and grey wash – an unusual combination of media that creates striking contrasts between light and shade and is typical of Rembrandt’s Leiden period. This combined technique also occurs in a few Leiden-period drawings previously attributed to Rembrandt, but now considered to be works by his friend Jan Lievens.12 These include the Trumpeter on Horseback, also in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1947-50),13 and the Foot Operation, in the Uffizi in Florence (inv. no. 1067 E).14
In both drawn self-portraits, Rembrandt represented himself wearing a cloak with frogging down the front, which would have had military associations for contemporary viewers. The left half of the face in the British Museum drawing is cast in deep shadow, as if seen by candlelight, and the artist portrayed himself with a half-open mouth, a motif that also appears in some of the early painted self-portraits, such as those in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (inv. no. 11427), dated 1629,15 and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (inv. no. C10063).16 The raised eyebrows in the London drawing strengthen the intensity of his gaze, and the open mouth seems to depict the artist while speaking. The Amsterdam drawing, by contrast, is more straightforward in character and thus closer to a rare etched Self-portrait of 1629 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-723),17 for which it has long been considered a preparatory study. Despite the close resemblance, there are subtle differences that have led more recent writers to exclude such a direct preliminary function. The drawing shows how Rembrandt actually saw himself in the mirror, with a hint of a scowl in the eyebrows. For the etching, he added a ‘lovelock’ or cadenette, a fashionably long lock of hair behind his left shoulder, reflecting a hairstyle worn by the aristocratic dandies of the day. This was no doubt the public persona that the ambitious young artist wished to convey to others.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 658 (c. 1630); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 54, fig. 62 (c. 1628-29); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1985, no. 1, with earlier literature; H.P. Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-century Identity, Princeton 1990, p. 24, fig. 24; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, pp. 32-33, fig. 4a, and no. 1; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 29, under no. 1, fig. 1a; E. Starcky, Rembrandt: Les Figures, Paris 1999, p. 24; C. White, Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work, New Haven/London 1999 (orig. edn. 1969), p. 119, fig. 145; C. White and Q. Buvelot (eds.), Rembrandt by himself, exh. cat. London (National Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1999-2000, no. 12; A. Chong (ed.), Rembrandt Creates Rembrandt: Art and Ambition in Leiden, 1629-1631, exh. cat. Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) 2000-01, p. 85, fig. 1a; E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt, the Printmaker, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/London (British Museum) 2000-01, p. 88, fig. b; E. Hinterding et al., Rembrandt: Dipinti, incisioni e riflessi sul ‘600 e ‘700 italiano, exh. cat. Rome (Azienda Speciale Palaexpo/Scuderie del Quirinale) 2002-03, p. 68, under no. 4, fig. a; C.S. Ackley et al., Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher, exh. cat. Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) 2003-04, no. 12; R. van Straten, Rembrandts Leidse tijd, 1606-1632, Leiden 2005, p. 129, fig. 177; RRP IV (2005), pp. 48, 145, 148-50, fig. 95; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 44 and 46, fig. 42; G. Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, p. 73, fig. 119; S. Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, p. 2, fig. 1.2; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), under no. 1; P. Sutton and W.W. Robinson, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Students and Circle from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat. Greenwich (CT) (Bruce Museum) 2011, p. 15, fig. 1; G. Rubinstein, ‘Brief Encounter: The Early Drawings of Jan Lievens and their Relationship with those of Rembrandt’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, p. 366 from pp. 352-70, fig. 32; M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné (online), no. 0054, with further literature
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait with Tousled Hair, Leiden, c. 1628 - c. 1629', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28117
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