Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar
1959
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Rembrandt Self-Portraits - written by Max Presneill
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker born 1606 in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands, to a miller and a baker’s daughter. Acknowledged for his talent at any early age by the time he was 18 or 19 he had opened his own studio after serving his apprenticeships. Financial mismanagement and struggles throughout his life, despite his acclaimed early and continued success as an artist, by living beyond his means, left him to die a pauper in 1669, aged 63.
"Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel like painting; whenever I see a Rembrandt, I feel like giving up.” Max Liebermann, painter.
Self Portrait
1658
The Frick Collection, New York
Rembrandt produced a series of startling self-portraits during his entire career. Modern scholarship puts his self-portrait output at around 40 paintings, with many other versions being copies made by his students as a teaching device. From the youthful and questioning reflection of his early work to his later powerful self analysis we can trace his physical and perhaps even his psychological progress towards death. His weathered features of the later portraits reflect ourselves back, in a sympathetic recognition of the process of life, the only thing we all share (with the possible exception of taxes, of course), that unites us in our humanity.
Using the chiaroscuro technique, probably discovered by Rembrandt through the work of Caravaggio and his Dutch Caravaggisti, the portraits are dramatic and bold. The play of light and deep shadow is theatrical but somber and thoughtful. Moving from an earlier style of smooth layering of paint he increasingly allowed a more disruptive impasto technique to mimic the wear and tear of his years. These works are tactile. They cause many painters an urge to touch the surface, to wonder if they are edible…
By the 1650s he was utilizing a deeper and richer palette, applied with a looser more confidence hand, with brushstrokes increasingly evident. The play of light becomes more dramatic. In his own time these works were often seen as coarse, anti-fashion, but still the hand of a Master. When viewing these works up close we can see the corporeal nature of the brushwork, uneven, disjointed, abstracted - while one step backs gives us an illusionistic phenomena of astounding clarity.
They are brutally honest paintings. No glamor or self-deception. No ego preening away or adjustments for vanity. Just intense looking and describing.
Self-portrait
1630 (when he was 24 yrs old)
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Bearing the weight of his past, a history of struggles, loves and losses, he sits alone, aware. There is a sense of his own mortality in each brushstroke. The decline of the physical body is mirrored with the thickening of paint, looser skinned, uneven and broken. Like looking into a mirror and not recognizing the person looking back at you - this is the genuine experience of aging, of time slipping away and the body's betrayal of ones youth.
Did this scrutiny allow him to accept the passing of his time a little easier. Does it help ours? For me, these paintings reaffirm the necessity of acceptance. They help ease the passage of time in that they remind me that this recognition of mortality is what it means to be human and self-aware. It is the basis of our cognition and why we can love life so poignantly.