Arent (or Aert) de Gelder was almost certainly Rembrandt's last pupil. He began his training in his native Dordrecht, probably around 1660, under Samuel van Hoogstraeten, who had also been a Rembrandt pupil twenty years before. It is probably from Hoogstraeten that De Gelder got his characteristic warm color scheme in which muted brown tones are nearly always enlivened by deep reds. Perhaps prompted by Hoogstraeten's departure for England in September 1662, De Gelder became apprenticed to Rembrandt in Amsterdam, where he is said to have remained for two years. Although there is no record of him in Dordrecht until 1669, it is highly likely that he left Rembrandt's workshop several years before the latter's death in that year.

Arent de Gelder was the only painter to adhere to the Rembrandtesque tradition in the decades following Rembrandt's death. In fact, he maintained and developed his own highly personal interpretation of Rembrandt's style for the rest of his life, into the third decade of the 18th century. He was predominantly a history painter, but his portraits also reveal an adaptation of Rembrandtesque precepts.

De Gelder might strike us to have been an exception in the course of art history: the lone standard bearer of an archetypically mid-17th century style for some seventy years after his Master's death, one who completely ignored changing pictorial conventions that were by the time of his dotage very far removed from his own. De Gelder did not depend on the sale of paintings for his livelihood however, coming from a wealthy family. Moreover, there is some evidence that he had a loyal following in Dordrecht, a city that stood apart from the mainstream of Dutch painting. It is easier to deduce an enduring Dordrecht style than it is for other artistic centers: the use of warm reds and red grounds for example is to be noted in all of Rembrandt's Dordrecht pupils, but also in classicizing artists with roots in the fijnschilder tradition, such as De Gelder's approximate Dordrecht contemporary Godfried Schalcken. The pressures to conform to changing tastes would have been less compelling in Dordrecht than in other leading Dutch cities. What is particularly fascinating about De Gelder's work however is that it represents to some extent a development of Rembrandt's own late style, or at the very least a logical extension of some facets of it, interpreted by De Gelder's highly personal brush. Houbraken’s description of De Gelder’s working process -‘Sometimes he also smears the paint, if for instance he wants to paint fringes or embroidery, with a broad palette knife onto the panel or canvas, and scrapes out the shapes of the embroidery, or the frills of the fringes’- reads as if he describes Rembrandt at work.

The present, recently re-rediscovered Portrait of a Young Man Behind a Balustrade abundantly testifies to this late Rembrandtesque approach. Until now known only in art historical literature from black/white reproductions, its recent resurfacing and subsequent restoration have caused a true metamorphosis (fig. 1). The portrait’s sitter, very possibly the artist himself, is a handsome young man seemingly in his twenties, with long brown wavy hair and a shapely countenance. Against a dark background, and strongly lit from the right – the right-hand side of his face remaining in shadow – he intriguingly stares at the viewer. Dressed in a greenish jacket with spectacular gold-brocade, eyelet-slashed sleeves, he engagingly leans his left arm over a stone balustrade, his elbow protruding over it. The shadow that his arm casts on the ledge cleverly enhances the portrait’s trompe l’oeil three-dimensionality. The young man’s right arm, self-confidently positioned in his side (the so-called ‘Renaissance elbow’), had previously been completely painted out but reappeared in full form subsequent to cleaning. Another splendid surprise is the rich, silvery silk turban that the young man wears. For unknown reasons, this beautiful headpiece had also been completely over-painted and replaced by a brownish furry hat. In it’s current, and original iteration, the style and execution of this portrait instantly recalls that of the late Rembrandt, especially in the treatment of the brocade sleeve, which closely echoes Rembrandt’s rendering of the clothing in his Portrait-Historié of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, better known as The Jewish Bride, in the Rijksmuseum (fig. 2). De Gelder must have known that masterpiece first-hand, possibly witnessing its creation in Rembrandt’s studio. Although one immediately considers the man’s famous golden sleeve, it in fact seems to be the woman’s sleeve that comes closest to De Gelder’s effort, both in its subtle tonality, the depiction of the creases, and the scratches in the wet paint – visible all over Rembrandt’s painting that add strongly to the fabric’s liveliness. As for the young man’s pose and his leaning on a stone ledge, De Gelder here likewise relied on his teacher. Rembrandt’s etched Self Portrait with Saskia of 1636 (fig. 3), the etched Self Portrait of 1639, and the painted Self Portrait of 1640 in the National Gallery, London (fig. 4) were De Gelder’s prime examples.

In order to better position the present work, it is instructive to survey previous scholarly opinions. The earliest – and still most elaborate – discussion based on a visual analysis (Karl Lilienfeld in 1914 only mentions a painting in a 1770 Amsterdam auction, which may or may not be identical with our work) comes from David van Fossen’s 1969 dissertation on De Gelder. Van Fossen, who either saw the painting in the original, or had a color photo at his disposal, discusses the work in conjunction with De Gelder’s similarly undated Portrait of a Young Man in Hanover, which indeed shows compositional) similarities with the present work (fig. 5).¹ He observes this portrait’s ‘clearly experimental character’ and its meticulous execution ‘although painted with a heavily-loaded brush.’ According to his observation ‘The sleeve is especially brilliant in its execution, reading with a rich, highly varied texture’. About the scratches in the paint he remarks that they are ‘another early use of a technique which is to enrich the surface of so many of his canvasses.’ He further remarks on the close connection with Rembrandt’s self-portraits, most markedly the 1640 painting in London, and dates both works circa 1679-1680. Of an altogether different opinion is Werner Sumowski in his Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüle of 1983 (later repeated in 1994), who dates this portrait – also in conjunction with the Hanover portrait – much later, around 1715-1720, comparing the latter stylistically with several late works.² In his catalogue raisonné on De Gelder, published in 1994, Joachim von Moltke, who had seen the work in the original, again notes the connection with the Hanover work, and dates both to about 1700-1710, while stating that the colouring of both works is inspired on the late Rembrandt, and that it distinguishes them from the rest of De Gelder’s portraiture.³ John Loughman, in the catalogue to the De Gelder exhibition of 1998 in Dordrecht and Cologne, points out the connection of both the present work and the Hanover painting with self-portraits by Samuel van Hoogstraten and Rembrandt; in the same publication Ekkehard Mai, in his entry on the Hanover work, refers for both works to Von Moltke’s dating of circa 1700-1710.

The identity of the sitter is a further fascinating facet of the picture which bears inspection, particularly as a possible comparison with established self-portraits of De Gelder. In fact, only one painting qualifies definitively as such, De Gelder’s 1685 dated Self Portrait as Zeuxis in Frankfurt (fig. 6), in which De Gelder pays homage to Rembrandt’s painting of the subject of 1663, now in Cologne. Comparing the face of this sitter with that of De Gelder’s appearance in the 1685 Frankfurt work (in which De Gelder is around 40 years old), one must keep in mind the supposed age difference of about fifteen years. With that in mind, the faces bear close similarities. Both feature a straight nose, interrupted by a minimal irregularity near the nose bridge; both show pronounced cheeks (in the Frankfurt work emphasised through the laughing); both show a shapely chin; and both men have brown, curly hair.

1. Van Fossen 1969, pp. 86-88, 235-236, cat. no. 20.(diss. supervised by Seymour Slive); Von Moltke 1998, cat. no. 94; E. Mai, in: Dordrecht/Cologne 1998-1999, cat. no. 44.

2. Sumowski 1983-1994, 2 (1983), pp. 1179, 1272, cat. no. 812, comparing the Hannover work with De Gelder’s Family Group of c. 1720 in the Louvre (cat. no. 816), and the late portraits of the physician Herman Boerhaave and his family in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis, The Hague, of c. 1722 (cat. no. 817, both).

3. Curiously, Sumowski, in his 1983 volume, refers to Von Moltke in nearly every entry on paintings by Van Gelder. Apparently Von Moltke’s manuscript was available to him, long before it was published in 1994.