Provenance

Sir Anthony Rothschild, Bt.

British, 1810 - 1876

Explore Selected Works

French 16th Century, Candlestick, c. 1547/1559, lead-glazed fine earthenware, Widener Collection, 1942.9.352

Candlestick

French 16th Century · c. 1547/1559 · lead-glazed fine earthenware ·  Accession ID  1942.9.352

Shown from the waist up, a man dressed in fine clothing looks out at us from against a deeply shadowed background in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s pale, peachy skin has a warm undertone that glows in a stark light source from our left. His body and face are angled to our right, and he cuts his dark eyes back to look at us under raised brows. He has a rounded, bulbous nose, and a wispy golden-brown goatee frames his closed pink lips. Shadows on his cheeks and jowls suggest soft flesh and a five o’clock shadow. Wiry brown hair curls out over his temples and down to the nape of his neck beneath a green, gold, orange, and burgundy-red skullcap. A soft brown beret rests on top of his skullcap tipped at an angle away from us. A teardrop-shaped pearl earring hangs from a gold setting in the ear we can see. He wears a cream-white tunic with gold and brown detailing along the hemlines. Over that is a dark brown, vest-like garment. The sleeves are slashed so the outer fabric is eggplant purple, and the inner slashes are golden yellow. A red cloth drapes over his left arm, farther from us, and that hand rests on a gold, spiraling shaft. A dark sash may be tied around his waist, and it seems that his other hand rests against his hip, to our left. The lower half of his chest and the background fall into deep shadow, though, so some the details there are difficult to make out. The painting is signed and dated in dark letters in a shaded area, so is nearly invisible in the lower center right; it reads, “Rembrandt f. 1650.”
Dutch 17th Century, Portrait of Rembrandt, 1650, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.70

Portrait of Rembrandt

Dutch 17th Century · 1650 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.70

Bibliography

1939

  • Roth, Cecil. The Magnificent Rothschilds. London, 1939.

1998

  • Ferguson, Niall. The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848. New York, 1998