Self-portrait, wearing a ruff and black hat shows a young Rembrandt in fine clothes gazing out at the viewer. Characteristically self-possessed, the intimacy of the painting shows how the artist unflinchingly examined himself in his works. This is one of his earliest self-portraits, and even here, a mature honesty and curiosity is on view.
According to George Gordon, Sotheby’s co-chairman of Old Masters Paintings, “Rembrandt’s face is instantly recognizable to us at every stage of his adulthood–far more so than any other painter. In each self-portrait he reveals as much of himself as he chooses to, but always in his unique fluency in the handling of paint.”