WORKSHOP OF REMBRANDT HARMENSZ. VAN RIJN | STUDY FOR AN ELDER

Anonymous sale, Bonn, Von Zengen Kunstauktionen, 13 September 2017, lot 1663 (as Anonymous 17th century);

Where acquired by the present owner. 

This vigorously painted and recently rediscovered head study is a sketch related directly to Rembrandt's Susanna and the Elders in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (fig. 1). Specifically, it follows that of the Elder at left in the final full scale composition, one of the great masterpieces from Rembrandt's early maturity. 

The manner in which the paint is applied underscores a direct awareness and contemporaneous understanding of Rembrandt's unique approach to paint application. The immediacy and spontaneity with which the thick impasto is laid onto the panel are of extremely high quality, imparting a forceful impression of confidence, and giving the viewer the sense that the paint is barely dry. 

Two additional sketches of the same Elder in nearly identical formats are known. One is last recorded in the collection of Madame Perone de Noailles in Fontainebleau, while the other was formerly in the Marczell von Nemes collection and then with Caretto Gallerie in Turin.¹ Though no version of the sketch has thus far been put forth as a likely candidate to bear Rembrandt's authorship, it would seem plausible, given the long development, design, and redesign of the final composition, that Rembrandt would have executed an oil sketch for one or more of the principal figures. Indeed, a pen ink study of the entire body of the present Elder is known in a sheet of circa 1638 in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (fig. 2).

A tree-ring analysis by Professor Pieter Klein concluded that the present panel is made of a single plank of oak of Western German or Netherlandish origins, of which the youngest heartwood ring is from 1602, with a plausible felling date in the span of 1615-25, and a plausible date of use from circa 1621 onwards. This analysis confirms a dating for the support which would have made it clearly available for use by the accepted years that Rembrandt worked and edited the final Berlin composition, from circa 1638 to 1647.² 

1. See E. van de Wetering, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. VI, The Hague 2015, p. 341, copies 2 and 3. 

2. Ibid., p. 325.