A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

221. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

Compare No. 672. That was painted when he was about thirty; this, some thirty years later. We see here the same features, though worn by age; the same self-reliant expression, though broken down by care. "In manner," says Sir Walter Armstrong, "it is amazingly free, irresponsible, and what in any one but a stupendous master we should call careless. It looks as though he had taken up the first dirty palette on which he could lay his hands, and set himself to the making of a picture with no further thought. To those who put signs of mastery above all other qualities, it is one of the most attractive pictures in the whole Gallery" (Portfolio, September 1891).