Rembrandt
(1660s)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
76.5 × 61.6 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1933
Gallery location
17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
The attribution of this work, acquired as a self-portrait by Rembrandt, has been questioned ever since its arrival in Australia in 1933. In 1982 the Rembrandt Research Project declared it to be by an unknown artist working in the manner of Rembrandt, but more recent technical investigation undertaken by the NGV’s conservation staff has encouraged a reassessment. It is now considered that Rembrandt belongs to a group of ‘self-portraits’, made for an undetermined purpose, which originated in Rembrandt’s workshop and were painted before Rembrandt’s own eyes by one or more of his studio assistants, with possibly some input from the master himself.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
the Netherlands
Inscription
inscribed in black paint (in a later hand) c.r.: Rembrandt / f. 1660
Accession Number
104-4
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Portraits
Subjects (specific)
artists (visual artists) busts (general, figures) flat caps (headgear) hats men (male humans) Rembrandt, Harmensz van Rijn self-portraits
Frame
The first oil painting attributed to Rembrandt came into the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1933.
The painting came to the collection in what appears to be an eighteenth century English Regency frame. It is reproduced in the frame in a photograph from the Argus newspaper, 2 March 1951, accompanied by a discussion of the painting by Arnold Shore at the time Rembrandt’s Portrait of a white haired man was acquired.
The painting was reframed in a variant of seventeenth century Dutch styles made in London by Frederick Pollak in 1954. (above)
This frame is likely to have been made around the time Daryl Lindsay had the Portrait of a white haired man, (acquired 1951) reframed. The frame is close to 180mm ( 7.5 inches) in width and is largely a reverse profile timber form with three strips of gilding.
A new proposal to reframe the painting came in 2013. A variant of a scotia frame with a run of ripple moulding was selected.
A frame with this profile had been supplied from London, as an alternative framing for De Vos Mother and Child (2009.2) in 2010. The frame was cut down with the corners re-cut to replicate the half lap joints of the back frame.
Cutting down the frame exposed the structure of this carefully constructed reproduction frame, which uses ebony for the shaped sections of the face of the frame, a soft wood for the ripple moulded section and softwood sections for the back frame. This is reflective of the construction of seventeenth century frames of this type, which used a fruitwood back frame with ebony panels applied to the face of the frame, shaped to form the flats, scotias and ogee curves.
The painting was fitted into the re-formatted frame in May 2013. (top)
Frame Details
Framemaker
Reproduction - commissioned by the NGV
Date
2013
Materials
Ebony and softwood