Self portrait with velvet beret
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn 1606 – 1669) was one of the most important Dutch artists and one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art. He lived in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement known as the Dutch Golden Age and gave rise to important new genres in painting, different from the fashionable Baroque.
Rembrandt, great master artist of the Golden Age
Rembrandt in youth was a successful portrait painter, but his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. His reputation as an artist remained high and so he was successful as a teacher, influencing many important Dutch painters. He is famous for his portraits of his contemporaries, his many self-portraits and paintings of biblical scenes in which he often used his Jewish neighbours as models.
Rembrandt, great master artist and self-portrait painter
Modern scholarship has calculated that there are over forty paintings as self portraits, some as part of a group. Some show him posing in fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. Together the pictures show Rembrandt clearly, his appearance and his character as revealed by his expressive face.
In his portraits and self-portraits, he angles the face so that the nose nearly always forms the line between light and shadowy areas. The faces are partially eclipsed; and the nose helps to focus the viewer’s attention and to dramatize the division between light and dark.
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