The fourth Oriental head.

During his lifetime, Rembrandt's extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands, and it also explains why, three centuries later, they were affordable for Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott, who presented 37 Rembrandt prints including this one to the National Art Gallery between 1952 and 1969.

This print is part of a set of four, traditionally referred to as the <em>Oriental Heads</em>. They are free copies after prints by Rembrandt's major contemporary, Jan Lievens, who shared a studio with him in their native Leiden between 1626 and 1631, when they were both young artists on the rise and before their move to Amsterdam. Our etching is based on Lievens’s <em>Bust of a young man, facing right</em> (Hollstein Dutch, XI, p. 42, no. 44).

The <em>Oriental Heads</em>  are fine examples of <em>tronies</em>, the Dutch word at the time for a face. Typically these are heads or busts only, concentrating on the facial expression, but often half-length when featured in an exotic costume. Tronies might be based on studies from life or use the features of actual sitters. Both paintings and prints of this kind were sold on the art market without identification of the sitter, and were not commissioned and retained by the sitter as portraits normally were. Rembrandt's tronies were among his most popular and widely imitated prints.

The New Hollstein <em>Rembrandt: Volume 1</em> (p. 240)states that on the plates of three of this series, Rembrandt indicated he had ‘geretuckeerd’ the etchings. This Dutch word can mean ‘retouched’ as well as ‘improved’ and in the case of a few paintings from the master’s studio, indeed, a similar phrasing seems to refer to works made by a pupil which were retouched or improved by Rembrandt. Consequently, the 19th century Rembrandt expert, Carel Vosmaer, proposed that the <em>Oriental Heads</em> were executed in the master’s workshop and only modified by Rembrandt himself in a later phase. Because the etchings are consistent with Rembrandt’s own style, Vosmaer’s opinion is not accepted any more by most scholars, although recently it has also been pointed out that the style of the signature ‘Rembrandt’ is very similar to that on a print which is universally thought to be by a pupil, <em>The artist’s mother in widow’s dress and black gloves</em> (New  Hollstein Dutch 91, copy a).

This impression comes from the third state (of six) of the etching, the last where Rembrandt himself worked on the plate. We can  establish this in the lock of hair immediately below the tip of the nose and another falling onto the sitter's chest, before the addition of Amsterdam print publisher Joost de Reyger’s address in the lower left corner and the appearance of a small horizontal scratch just right of the monogram. There are two impressions of this print in Te Papa's collection; the other, also from the same etching state, was given to the Colonial Museum by Bishop Ditlev Monrad (1869-0001-432).

References: New Hollstein Dutch 152, 3rd of 6 states; Hollstein Dutch 289, 2nd of 3 states.

See:

New Hollstein, <em>Rembrandt: Volume 1</em> (2013)

Wikipedia, 'Tronie', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronie

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    August 2017