Artwork Page for Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window

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Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window

1648
(Dutch, 1606–1669)
Support
Beige(1) laid paper
Measurements
Sheet: 17.3 x 14.5 cm (6 13/16 x 5 11/16 in.); Platemark: 15.6 x 12.9 cm (6 1/8 x 5 1/16 in.)
Credit Line
Catalogue raisonné
Hollstein 22 (XVIII.10)
State
v/v
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

In order to show himself with the direct gaze that characterizes this self-portrait, Rembrandt translated a view seen while studying himself in a mirror.

Description

In this late self-portrait—one of more than 80 created by Rembrandt van Rijn—the artist shows himself informally posed at a studio window. He uses a needle to draw into a copper etching plate and gazes directly at the viewer as if interrupted in the process of creating a work of art. The window provides the light required to complete this task, but it also reveals the isolation of art making by juxtaposing Rembrandt’s interior space with the expansive landscape and external world from which he has sequestered himself.
A vertically oriented etching and drypoint in black ink on cream paper depicts a man with a light skin tone seated at a desk. Wearing a dark hat, he looks toward us while holding a stylus over a stack of papers. Light from a window on our left bathes his face in white, while the right side is shrouded in heavy shadow. Through the window, a landscape with distant buildings is visible.

Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window

1648

Rembrandt van Rijn

(Dutch, 1606–1669)
Netherlands

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