Rembrandt: “Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat”, 1632
Sotheby’s to auction a self-portrait by Rembrandt On July 2020, Sotheby’s will auction one of the last self-portraits by Rembrandt left in private hands.]]>
June 12, 2020, source: Sotheby’s
No artist’s face is so instantly recognisable as that of Rembrandt. From sketches of an ambitious and self-confident youth of 22, to detailed and sobering self-depictions of a careworn and prematurely aged old man of 63, he recorded his own physiognomy in some 80 paintings, etchings and drawings, documenting his enduring captivation with his own image throughout almost the entire span of his career.
Almost all of Rembrandt’s painted self-portraits are by now in major museum collections, and only three remain in private hands. One of these, discovered and sold at Sotheby’s in London in 2003, is in the Leiden collection in New York, while another is on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland. The third – the earliest in date of the three, and in some ways the most revealing – will be offered with an estimate of £12-16 million ($15-20 million) at Sotheby’s London on 28 July. Of intimate proportions and embodying Rembrandt’s unique mastery of self-examination, “Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat”, will star in the pioneering evening sale, in which an exceptional selection of Old Master paintings will be offered alongside the season’s top Impressionist & Modern, Contemporary and Modern British works.
The painting can be dated to a narrow window towards the end of 1632, thanks to the fact that it is signed with a form of the artist’s signature that he only very briefly employed, and also because dendrochronological analysis shows that it is painted on a panel cut from the same Baltic oak tree as another picture from that precise period.
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Rijksmuseum announces restoration of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ (news, 2019)
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