Elderly ManLeiden School(Leiden 1613 – 1675 Leiden)

ca. 1630
oil on panel
50.9 x 40.6 cm
GD-109© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly Man
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How to cite
Rahusen, Henriette. “Elderly Man” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Seen in profile, the elderly man seems lost in thought as he gazes quietly downward inComparative Figures

a pose echoing the sloped shape of his left shoulder. Intense light reflecting off thesitter’s bald head helps draw attention to his finely rendered and precisely articulatedfeatures. No attributes identify the sitter, who wears a softly-rendered reddish-brownwoolen cloak that covers a simple white shirt visible at the neck. The painting is, infact, a character study, or tronie, probably done from life, rather than a commissionedportrait.
In many respects the clarity of modeling in this well-preserved panel painting issimilar to that seen in works by Gerrit Dou from the early to mid-1630s.
Nevertheless, Dou’s painterly techniques are more nuanced than those evident in thiswork, as can be seen in a comparison with Dou’s Astronomer (Heraclitus?), ca.
1631–32, in the Hermitage (fig 1), where the same model is depicted. Instead of theblended and smooth brushwork and linear definition of features evident in ElderlyFig 1. Gerrit Dou, Astronomer(Heraclitus?), ca. 1628, oil on panel,
38.5 x 31 cm, State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 1012

Man, in the Hermitage painting Dou used careful parallel hatchings to help enliven
the astronomer’s face. Indeed, the glint of light off the sitter’s forehead in Elderly
Man is more akin to the reflections off hard, inanimate surfaces in Dou’s Still Life
with Globe, Lute, and Books, ca. 1635 (fig 2), than in his images of living individuals.
The model for this tronie, who appears in multiple paintings and etchings by Dou, JanLievens (1607–74), and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) around 1630, was wellknown in the Leiden artistic community.[1] He is, for example, seen in Rembrandt’setching, Bust of an Old Man, 1630 (fig 3). This man also sat for Lievens, as is evident
in that master’s Head of an Old Man, ca. 1629, in the National Gallery of Ireland (figFig 2. Gerrit Dou, Still Life with
Globe, Lute, and Books, ca. 1635, oil
on panel, 22.5 x 30 cm, private
collection, Montreal

4).[2] Since the late nineteenth century, this model has often been identified as
Rembrandt’s father.[3] However, a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv.
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly ManPage 3 of 8

WA1855.11), of a bearded old man bearing the inscription “HARMAN GERRITS”
and signed by Rembrandt (“van de Rhijn”), depicts an elderly man whose features
clearly differ from those of the sitter in the Leiden Collection work.[4]A more likely identification of the model comes from documentation related toanother painting in which he appears: Jan Lievens’s Old Man Holding a Skull, ca. 1630
(fig 5). As Lloyd DeWitt has noted, this painting is listed in the 1640 inventory of JanJansz. Orlers as “the keeper of the Almshouse with a Skull in his hand” that was“painted from life.”[5] Two archival documents reveal that in 1629 and 1631 thefinancial officer (rentmeester) of the Sint Catharina Gasthuys in Leiden was named
Jan van Heussen, who resided in the “Rijn” district of town.[6] An engraved portrait
Jan van Heussen at the Age of 27 by Hendrick Goltzius, dated ca. 1581 (fig 6),Fig 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, Bust of anOld man, 1630, etching, 11.8 x 9.7 cm,
Rijksprentenkabinet RP-P-OB-590

sufficiently resembles the model—including early baldness and the heavy lidded
eyes—to suggest that the model for this tronie may have been Jan van Heussen, who
would have been seventy-five years old in 1629.[7] Regardless of the man’s identity,
his distinctive features inspired Rembrandt, Lievens and Dou, and other unidentified
artists from Leiden, to repeatedly use him as a model for tronies and in a number ofmultifigure compositions.[8]- Henriette Rahusen, 2017

Fig 4. Jan Lievens, Head of an Old
Man, ca.1629, oil on panel, 59.7 x 48
cm. unframed, National Gallery ofIreland Collection, Photo © National
Gallery of IrelandFig 5. Jan Lievens, An Old Man
Holding a Skull, ca. 1625–30, oil onpanel, 61.6 x 48.3 cm, private
collection© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly Man
Page 4 of 8Fig 6. Hendrick Goltzius, Jan vanHeussen at the Age of 27, ca. 1581,
engraving, 4.8 x 3.5 cm, FitzwilliamMuseum, Cambridge, inv. P.7330-R,
Hollstein (English) H 196© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly ManPage 5 of 8Endnotes
1. For the close working relationship between Rembrandt, Lievens, and Dou, see Ronni Baer, “The Lifeand Art of Gerrit Dou,” in Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou, 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt,ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich
Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 2000), 28–30. Painted works by Dou in which thesame model appears, other than Astronomer (Heraclitus?), include The Tooth-Puller, ca. 1630–35 (Muséedu Louvre, Paris), and Old Man Lighting a Pipe, ca. 1635 (private collection, England). Examples inwhich this figure appears in etchings by Lievens include Bust of an Old Man (Hollstein Dutch 51-2(2);Rijksprentenkabinet, RP-P-OB-12.577) and Bust of an Old man in a Fur Cap (Rijksprentenkabinet,Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-12.557), both ca. 1631.
2. My thanks to Dominique Surh for drawing my attention to the similarity of Lievens’s painting in Dublin
and Elderly Man.
3. Emile Michel, “La Jeunesse de Rembrandt, 3e article,” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (August 1890):
159–60. For more on the early discussion about the identity of the male model, see Arthur M. Hind,“The Portraits of Rembrandt’s Father,” Burlington Magazine 8, no. 36 (1906): 426–27, 430–31.
4. The inventory number of the drawing in the Ashmolean Museum is: WA1855.11. Rembrandt’s father,
Harmen Gerritsz van Ryn (ca. 1568–1630), was a malt miller in Leiden. Peter Schatborn has argued thatthe old man in the Ashmolean drawing is indeed Rembrandt’s father because the ink used in the drawing
is also used for the inscription. See Christiaan Vogelaar and Gerbrand Korevaar, Rembrandt’s Mother:
Myth and Reality (Zwolle, 2005), 189–90, no. 59. The inscription is deemed contemporary with thedrawing, which means that Rembrandt did leave us a drawn portrait of his father. The same old man
with the bulbous nose appears as Man Trimming a Quill, ca. 1627–28, by Jan Lievens (formerly KistersCollection, Kreuzlingen). See Vogelaar and Korevaar, Rembrandt’s Mother, 150, fig. 108.
5. “…de Coster van het Gasthuys met een Dootshooft inden arm.” See: R. E. O. Ekkart and M. L.
Wurfbain, eds., Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal)(Leiden, 1976), 18; also Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed. Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh.
cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam,Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 124–25, no. 122, repro. In pose and use of the samemodel, Lievens’s Old Man Holding a Skull seems directly related to his etching Bust of an Old
Man (Hollstein Dutch 51-2(2); Rijksprentenkabinet, RP-P-OB-12.577) mentioned above.
6. For Van Heussen as rentmeester, see the inventory of the Sint Catharinagasthuys, Regionaal ArchiefLeiden, Gasthuizen, arch. 504, inv. I.1.3.26 and 27. For his residency in the Rijn neighborhood, seeRAL, arch. 501A, inv. 1318, 6 March 1631. The mill of Rembrandt’s father, the Pelicaen (#108 on theBlaeu map), stood along the stretch of water listed as “Den Rijn” on Joan Blaeu’s detailed map of Leidenof 1649. This indicates that the patronym of both Harmen Gerritsz as well as Rembrandt came from thelocation of the family’s mill: both were “van den Rijn” (“from the Rijn”). In 1622, the Lievens family© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly ManPage 6 of 8

lived closer to the center of town, in the Pieterskerk Choorsteeg (#87 on the Blaeu map).
7. From at least 18 June 1580 to 15 November 1597, Jan Cornelisz van Heussen is identified as the Schout
tot Noordwijk (sheriff ) in two notarial records in the Leiden city archives. The office of Schout would
have been held by a well-respected member of the local elite. Noordwijk is a village 7.5 miles northwestof Leiden, Noordwijkerhout is a suburb of Noordwijk. Archief Leiden, nr. 0506, inv. 9, folio 150(1580) and nr. 0506, inv. 61, folio 184v (1597).
8. Examples include Bust of an Old Man, 1630, in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck,and Study of an Old Man, 1630–31, in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, both byRembrandt; and Jan Lievens’s Tric-Trac Players in an Inn, ca. 1624 (Spier Collection, Cape Town) and“Sultan Soliman”, ca. 1629–31 (Gemäldegalerie, Potsdam). For these works, see Arthur K. WheelockJr., ed. Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008),
86, fig. 2, and 118–19, no. 19.

Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands [Marina Aarts, Amsterdam, 2006].
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Exhibition History
Leiden, Lakenhal Museum, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9 March–31 August
2014 [lent by the present owner].
Kingston, Queen’s University, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, “Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges,”
24 August–1 December 2019; Edmonton, Art Gallery of Alberta, 7 March–27 September, 2020;
Regina, MacKenzie Art Gallery, 5 December 2020–21 February 2021; Hamilton, Art Gallery ofHamilton, 13 March–30 May 2021, no. 15 [lent by the present owner].

References
Surh, Dominique, Ilona van Tuinen, and John Twilley. “Insights from Technical Analysis on a Group ofPaintings by Gerrit Dou in the Leiden Collection.” JHNA 6:1 (Winter 2014): n. 12.
DOI:10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.3© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elderly Man
Page 7 of 8Coutré, Jacquelyn N., Ed. Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges. Exh. cat. Kingston, Agnes
Etherington; Edmonton, Art Gallery of Alberta; Hamilton, Art Gallery of Hamilton. Kingston, 2019,
186-89, no. 15.

Versions
Related Print

1. Rembrandt van Rijn, Bust of an Old Man, 1630, etching, 11.8 x 9.7 cm, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. no.
RP-P-OB-590.

Technical Summary
The painting is executed on a composite panel comprised of two vertically grained and oriented oak planks,
stemming from different trees of Baltic origin, felled between 1611 and 1620.[1] The vertical join is located(ca. 20.5 cm from the left edge) through the center of the composition, directly through the sitter’s face. Aportion of the left plank has been previously planed and is lighter in color. Two rectangular 3.5 cm H x 6 cm
W, horizontally grained, rectangular wooden cleats have been adhered to the upper and center portions of thepanel join with a radio-opaque adhesive. There are thin remnants of a third cleat along the lower portion ofthe panel join.
There are wide, shallow bevels along all four edges. The panel has a very slight convex warp when viewed
from the front and is of slightly varying thickness, ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 cm. In addition, a narrow bevel
along the entire width of the reverse of the lower edge is the result of the composite panel being prepared fortree ring analyses by Dr. Peter Klein in September 2006 and by Ian Tyers in November 2010.
There are no wax seals, panel maker’s marks or import stamps.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied and the oil (est.) paint has been built up insuccessive thin layers. Both the paint and ground spill over onto the thickness of the panel edges slightly
along all four edges.
No underdrawing is evident in infrared photography at 780, 750, or 1000 nanometers, and there are nopentimenti or compositional changes visible in the X-radiograph or infrared images.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
Damar varnish was thinly and evenly applied by brush in 2006 and by spray in July 2008.[2] It has a satin
finish and saturates the image.

Technical Summary Endnotes© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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1. According to Ian Tyers dendrochronology report dated November 2010.
2. According to Nancy Krieg’s private conservation treatment notes and discussions with Nancy Krieg’s
former assistant Kirsten Younger, who treated this painting.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection