Self-portrait with Beret

What you are looking at

Rembrandt sits half-length, turned slightly to the right, and looks back over his shoulder at us. He wears a large dark beret and a heavy brown cloak with a turned-up collar that hides his neck and jowls. His hands are clasped in his lap at lower left, barely emerging from the gloom. Almost everything is brown, grey and black, except the face, which catches a strong light from the upper left.

That face is the picture. The skin is built up in thick, tactile paint, pushed and dragged with the brush and possibly the palette knife, in pinks, ochers, reds and grey-greens. Light pools on the forehead and the bulb of the nose; the eyes, set under raised brows, are slightly swollen and red-rimmed. A faint vertical crease between the brows, the grey curls escaping from the beret, the blemishes on cheek and ear are all recorded without flattery. At the left, in the dark background, is the signature and date: Rembrandt f. 1659.

Rembrandt in 1659

In 1656, after years of overspending, Rembrandt was declared insolvent. His house and his large collection of art and curiosities were sold in 1657 and 1658, and he moved with his companion Hendrickje Stoffels and his son Titus to a rented house in a poorer part of Amsterdam. He was 53 when he painted this, still working and taking commissions, but no longer the fashionable master of the 1630s.

He painted himself more than any artist before him, some 40 paintings plus drawings and etchings, across four decades. The late self-portraits, of which this is one of the most searching, are often read as a meditation on aging and endurance.

Technique

Rembrandt varies his handling across the canvas more than almost any contemporary. The thick impasto of the face contrasts with thin, dark glazes in the cloak and background, so the head seems to come forward out of shadow. Patches of red in the background may indicate a chair back and a tablecloth.

Meaning

There is no studio costume here, no gold chain or exotic headdress, as in his youthful self-portraits. The painter presents himself plainly, as an aging man who has lost his fortune but not his concentration. Whether he meant it as self-examination or simply as a saleable image of a famous artist, the effect is of extraordinary honesty.

Where to see it

The painting is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, part of the Andrew W. Mellon Collection. For more Rembrandt, see Artist in his Studio and Storm on the Sea, and compare Monet's quick, outdoor-minded Self-Portrait in Beret.