Bust of an old bearded Man, looking down, three Quarters right

This beautifully sweeping and sensitive rendering of an old man, looking down, is executed in a fine etching style with engraving, typical of Rembrandt’s working methods in the 1630s. There is a skilfully conceived contrast in the print: light passes across the figure, and the intensity of dark hatching is tempered by a soft handling of the bearded man’s delicate facial features and wrinkled brow. This thoughtful etching belongs to a significant group of prints, drawings, and paintings from Rembrandt’s Leiden period, featuring elderly men, among them the painting A Hermit Reading (Louvre, Paris). In many of these works, the sitter is depicted with his eyes downcast, drifting into a detached contemplative state. In this delicate portrait, there is a subtle shift in the old man's body; his three-quarter pose creates distance and grants him a realm of his own. There is a possibility that the figure was etched from life. It certainly seems that the man’s physicality was of the utmost importance to Rembrandt: bold gestural corrections were made in pen and brown ink to the only known impression of the first state, suggesting he considered strengthening the man’s back and forearm. However, these revisions were never implemented; instead, the shadows were deepened around the man’s head and lines around his torso were burnished away, allowing light, rather than line, to articulate the form.

This print is a fine impression of the third and final state, in which no further changes were made to the composition; Rembrandt simply improved the placement of the sitter in the picture plane by reducing the size of the copper plate. This impression prints sharply and clearly, with subtle accents of the mouth and eye still perceptible within the deepest passages of shadow. The sheet comes with distinguished provenances, including Edward Astley, and may even be tentatively traced back to the collection of the nephew of Rembrandt’s patron Jan Six.