Beggar seated on a Bank

This fascinating and very engaging print has always been seen as a self-portrait in disguise. It is closely related to a small facial study of Rembrandt himself, posing with an expression of fury, the Self-Portrait open-mouthed, as if shouting: Bust (lot 2), created in the same year. For the present etching, he seems to have repeated the face, now reversed, and stuck it onto the figure of a seated beggar, dressed in a ragged cloak. Especially in the early years, Rembrandt enjoyed depicting himself in picturesque or exotic costumes, but this instance of 'down-dressing' is unique in his printed oeuvre and has attracted much critical attention, as Nick Stogdon remarked: 'Much ink has been spilt attempting to account for Rembrandt's passing himself off as a sturdy but somewhat angry beggar. Although it is always a little surprising to come across this plate amongst the poor folk and mendicants, rather than the self-portraits, the gesture is an interesting one.' (Stogdon, 2011, no. 71, p. 120) It speaks for Rembrandt's humanity and ability to empathize that he quite literally put himself in the shoes of a beggar. 'This could be me', he seems to say and it is precisely this attitude with which he portrayed homeless and destitute people in his prints.
The etching is also interesting for its formal qualities, as Martin Sonnabend in his introduction to this catalogue points out, for it is one of the earliest ones in which Rembrandt constructed the image out of areas of light and shade, and began to limit the use of descriptive lines in favour of tonality.