Rembrandt Self Portrait


The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is perhaps best known for its great Rembrandt paintings. The Night Watch and The Jewish Bride are there, and as a bonus the museum has The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis on loan from Sweden, while the National Museum in Stockholm is being renovated. I will show drawings from these in future posts.

My familiarity with the large scale of these later Rembrandt paintings made his earlier work surprisingly small. The Self Portrait from 1628-1629, sketch shown above, is about 9 by 7 inches. To paint the hair, Rembrandt scratched though upper layers of paint, as well as applying finely drawn shapes with a small brush.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self-portrait_(1628-1629),_by_Rembrandt.jpg

Like the sketch that I presented from Copenhagen in my first blog post, this drawing reflects how I felt at the time, mixed in with the forms of the painting I was looking at. This mixture of content I find rich and interesting. As an artist one of my favorite things to do sketch from a great painting and see my drawing develop. The process becomes like a conversation between the other artist and me. Presented with his great achievement, I am very interested in hearing what Rembrandt has to say.

This sketch has more of Rembrandt in it, than did the sketch from Krøyer. But I made my young Rembrandt look older.

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