The face that stares out of the canvas is immediately familiar: with his heavily-lidded eyes, full lips, slightly bulbous nose and cloud of curly dark hair, it is the young Rembrandt van Rijn, a genius who revolutionised the art of painting in 17th Century Holland. Brilliant engraver, inspired painter of religious and mythological scenes and innovative portraitist, Rembrandt returned again and again to his own likeness as a subject, sometimes in formal attire and pose, and in other instances as a convenient model for informal experimentation. These self-portraits are among his most beloved and sought-after works, and, as a result, they were extensively copied by pupils, followers and imitators. When this Portrait of Rembrandt as a young man appeared at auction in 2019, it was obscured by a dirty varnish and laid down onto a square canvas, from which it has since been removed. Neither the cleaning nor the subsequent pigment analysis revealed any anachronisms. The face of the young Rembrandt now nearly fills the circular canvas, starkly illuminated from the upper left so that the artist’s brow and the left half of his face are deeply shadowed. Yet, while this sort of lighting study is familiar to scholars of Rembrandt self-portraits – indeed, this work relates particularly closely to two accepted early self-portraits from around the same date, the Rijksmuseum picture of circa 1628 and the Alte Pinakothek self-portrait which has been dated to 1629 – this is not a copy or version of a known self-portrait. The question of its origins is therefore an intriguing one, particularly as relatively little is known about the artist’s Leiden workshop practice at this time.

Rembrandt’s early career:

The subject of Rembrandt’s early career was explored in the exhibition Young Rembrandt, which took place in 2019-20 at Leiden’s Museum de Lakenhal and the Ashmolean in Oxford. In the catalogue introduction by Rembrandt scholar Christiaan Vogelaar, the artist’s movements were traced, from his earliest apprenticeship under Jacob Isaacz van Swanenburg (chosen, apparently, due to the shortage of history painters in Leiden) to his triumphant rise to dominance in Amsterdam’s competitive artistic scene. A six-month apprenticeship under Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam undoubtedly expanded Rembrandt’s understanding of composition, after which he returned to Leiden to open his own studio in partnership with his friend, the artist Jan Lievens. The pair owed a great deal to Constantijjn Huygens (1596 – 1687) the secretary to stadtholder Frederick Henry in the Hague, who assisted the ambitious young artists with valuable introductions. In 1628, Gerrit Dou joined the studio as Rembrandt’s first pupil.

Having fought so hard to establish his position and corner the market in Leiden, why did Rembrandt then move to Amsterdam just three years later, in 1631, the same year another talented painter, Isaak de Jouderville, joined the Leiden studio? (The following year, Lievens departed as well, bound for London.) Scholars propose that Rembrandt found the environment in Amsterdam – calmer, more tolerant and more intellectual – appealing, and the considerably larger metropolis offered a broader clientele for his portraiture business. Amsterdam also provided the opportunity for a profitable partnership with Hendrick van Uylenburgh, a painter turned dealer from Friesland, who sought out business for Rembrandt and handled the financial transactions, thus freeing Rembrandt to devote all his attention to painting.

Leiden studio:

When Rembrandt left for Amsterdam in 1631, he did not shutter his Leiden studio, but instead seems to have left it active under Dou’s leadership. As Vogelaar surmises, Rembrandt probably made this decision due to the uncertainty of success in a new city, particularly one in which he faced more competition for business. During the period in which he oversaw two workshops, Rembrandt summoned both De Jouderville and Dou, and possibly others, to Amsterdam from time to time to assist during busier periods. It seems likely that he finally closed the Leiden studio shortly after 1634, the year he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, a cousin of his business partner, and determined to remain permanently in Amsterdam, having achieved considerable renown and commercial success.

Scholars do not know nearly as much about Rembrandt’s Leiden studio as we do about his Amsterdam atelier. Among the names that are associated with the Leiden workshop were Dou (1613 – 1675), De Jouderville (1612/13 – 1645), and Jacques de Rousseaux (1600 – 1636/8). A number of paintings were left behind by Rembrandt in Leiden in an unfinished state and subsequently completed by his pupils. Among these are A young scholar and his tutor (Getty Museum, Los Angeles, now given to Rembrandt and Dou) and Let the little children come to me (begun 1627, now called Rembrandt and later hand, Collection of Jan Six). There is also a privately-owned Return of Tobias and the Angel now called Rembrandt, Dou and Lievens.

In manner of painting, De Jouderville perhaps approached nearest to Rembrandt in his style, while Dou and Rousseaux were both more polished. Dou, considered the first of the Leiden fijnschilders, received early training as a painter of stained glass (as the son of a glassmaker) and was often assigned the detail and reflective work in Rembrandt’s own compositions. We know of only one signed painting by De Jouderville, however, a copy of a self-portrait painted around 1630, so his oeuvre is largely speculative, to the extent that – for Van de Wetering and others – ‘De Jouderville’ was used as a catch-all attribution for paintings believed to originate in the Leiden workshop and not assignable to someone like Dou.

Comparisons:

If the author of this portrait remains a matter of speculation, its quality is not in doubt. Similarities to early self-portraits, in both composition and technique, seemingly tie it to the Leiden workshop and to the period around 1630. It bears close resemblance to the earliest known self-portraits by Rembrandt, the Self-portrait of circa 1628 now in the Rijksmuseum and that of 1629 in the Alte Pinakothek, both of which depict the artist in a similar pose and comparably dressed. In each, Rembrandt is depicted bust-length, turned three-quarter view towards the observer, set against a plain ground and dressed simply in a dark coat and a shirt with a bright, freely-painted white collar. He is cast into differing degrees of shadow, a feature that scholars have suggested may indicate that the self-portraits were done as lighting studies; in the Rijksmuseum self-portrait, Rembrandt’s eyes are barely discernible in the deep shadow, while the light bounces off his right cheek and the tip of his nose. In the Alte Pinakothek work, the upper part of his face remains shadowed while the lower half is more legible. In our portrait, not a copy of any known self-portrait, the light once again shines in from the left of the canvas, but there are more details of the sitter’s face highlighted, including his upper lip, the bridge of his nose and his right eyelid. His left cheek, meanwhile, and the area beneath his brow bone remain in deep shadow. Details such as the sprinkling of stubble, the softness of the jawline and even the two tiny pink spots or blemishes are keenly observed.

The Rijksmuseum self-portrait, originally thought to be a copy of a work in Kassel when it resurfaced at auction in 1959, was proposed as the lost original by Kurt Bauch on the basis of the technique, with a reserve left in the painted background for the head; in the Kassel picture, the head was laid on top of the finished ground. Our portrait also features a reserve for the head, as can be seen in the direction of the brush marks. There is no scratching out in the hair in our work, as we see in the curls of the Rijksmuseum and Alte Pinakothek self-portraits, but the hair seems to be the area that has suffered the most due to abrasion and trimming of the canvas so we cannot be certain about its original appearance. All three paintings also share the technique used to depict the artist’s stubble, which seems to peek through the flesh-tones as a darker underlayer.

If we compare Rembrandt’s Self-portrait with a gorget of circa 1629 with a copy generally believed to be by Dou, painted perhaps a year later, it seems clear that Dou’s copy is crisper than Rembrandt’s original conception – particularly evident in details such as the outline of the lips and in the careful painting of the white collar – as we would expect from an artist known for his detail work. Our portrait, by contrast, is considerably more loosely painted, with softer contours in the features and less clarity in the definition of the shadows and costume. As Christopher Brown explains in his exploration of ‘Early painted self-portraits’ in the Ashmolean catalogue, there were numerous copies and versions of Rembrandt’s self-portraits produced in the Leiden workshop at this time, and this appears to be the metier in which this circular portrait originated.

Technical study:

In addition to its cleaning and the restoration of the original circular canvas by Simon Gillespie Studio, this portrait underwent a pigment analysis in September 2020 conducted by Dr. Tracey Chaplin; both reports are available by request. Dr. Chaplin analysed three microscopic paint samples, taken from the tip of the figure’s nose, his left brow and his hair near the hairline. The analysis determined that the painting is built upon a red ground later composed of red ochre with a small amount of lead white, and that the pigments used by the artist include red ochre, red lake, cinnabar/’dry-process’ vermilion, lead white and carbon black. These are all in keeping with the materials available to Rembrandt’s studio and used by the artist himself. Simon Gillespie has noted a grey imprimatura in the face, a technique that is again consistent with Rembrandt.

Gillespie further notes that there is no cusping around the perimeter of the round canvas, possibly indicating that it was trimmed slightly at some point in its history. Although the existing backing canvas interfered with a weave count, an examination in raking light seemingly confirmed that the canvas was of a type that would be expected for this period. There is, further, no evidence of incompatible materials such as resins to aid drying.

Provenance:

The earliest secure provenance we have, thanks to visual records in the archives of the RKD, is with H.H. Cevat, where it is recorded as a self-portrait by Rembrandt and took the format of a circular canvas, indicating that it was inset into a compressed rectangular canvas at a later point. It may also have been removed from an elongated, vertical rectangular canvas, as another historic black and white image seemingly indicates. This other photograph is inscribed on the reverse ‘Picture as bought at Motcomb’s Summer 1959 – owing to a label at the back from Cap. G.R. Pracocq – Partly cleaned.’ No further information about either Motcomb’s or a Captain Peacocq has yet been discovered.

Kunsthandel H.H. Cevat was a dealership based in Lausanne, Switzerland, active in the mid-20th Century and specialising in old masters. The gallery ceased trading in 1965, the year after the Basses donated this portrait as part of the gift to establish to their museum, so it seems likely that they acquired it directly from Cevat. Daan Cevat (1913 – 1990), the Dutchman who ran the dealership at the time, is known to have owned and sold a number of works by Rembrandt and his pupils and contemporaries, such as The Healing of the Sick by Arent de Gelder, now in the Leiden collection.

The next owners of the painting, John and Johanna Bass, Austrian Jews by birth, lived in Miami Beach, Florida. John Bass made his fortune as President of the Fajardo Sugar Company in Puerto Rico, and he and his wife were avid collectors of both Contemporary and Old Master artists. In 1963, the couple and pledged 500 artworks to the city to establish the Bass Museum of Art. The Museum officially opened on 7 April 1964. In 2019, seeking to add to the acquisitions fund and redirect focus more exclusively towards the Contemporary sector, the board of the museum arranged to deaccession a number of pieces through Christie’s and through a regional auction house. This painting, obscured at the time by overpaint and an old varnish, as well as set into a rectangular canvas with a fragment of a landscape on it, was offered for sale with an estimate of just $15,000-20,000 and no reserve. Due to speculation, however, competing bidders drove the price up to $675,000.