Bust of an Old Bearded Man, Looking Down, Three Quarters Right

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An original Rembrandt Van Rijn etching.

1631

Original etching printed in black ink on laid paper bearing a portion of a Posthorn watermark (Ash/Fletcher 31).

Signed in the plate with the artist’s monogram lower right RHL (faint).

A superb 17th century/lifetime impression of Bartsch and New Hollstein’s third and final state, Usticke’s second state of three, of this very rare etching (characterized by G.W. Nowell-Usticke in his 1967 catalogue Rembrandt’s Etchings: States and Values as “a very scarce, good looking head”, and assigned his scarcity rating of “RR-” [approximately 50 – 75 impressions extant in that year]), printed after the right edge of the plate was trimmed down eliminating the date following the monogram in the previous state in the process, but before the addition of the extra vertical shading to the shoulder.

Catalog: Bartsch 260 iii/iii; Hind 47; Biorklund-Barnard 31-E; Usticke 260 ii/iii; New Hollstein 84 iii/iii.

This bearded old man belongs to a group of prints, drawings and paintings from the early 1630’s all featuring old men. The figure displays great similarities to both the old man in a painting that was formerly in Schwerin, and the reading hermit in a painting in Paris. Münz thought the etching had been executed by Johannes van Vliet after a drawing in Weimar of the paintinhg in Paris and that Rembrandt was only responsible for the finishing touches. This point of view, however, is no longer accepted. The man may have been etched from life.