- Two versions of Rembrandt’s Old Man with a Gold Chain are now displayed together in Chicago.
- Experts agree the canvas, deemed a copy, came from Rembrandt’s studio, but dispute whether he painted it himself.
- A leading scholar argues the canvas’s quality suggests it was executed by Rembrandt, not a pupil.
There are two known versions of Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631) by Dutch Golden Age artist Rembrandt van Rijn. One life-sized iteration on panel has lived at the Art Institute of Chicago since 1922. Another slightly smaller version on canvas has belonged to the family of British entrepreneur Francis Newman for 127 years. After the large panel surfaced, experts reclassified the canvas as a workshop copy. Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz, however, claims it’s by the master’s hand.
The artist produced Old Man with a Gold Chain the same year he started working in his dealer’s Amsterdam studio—five years before establishing a workshop there. A technically impressive portrait, it just might depict Rembrandt’s father.
Newman’s great-grandfather bought the canvas Old Man from a London gallery in 1898. The Art Institute of Chicago said the panel turned up 14 years later, obscured by varnish. German art historian Wilhelm Bode examined both. He deemed the panel an original, and the canvas a copy by one of Rembrandt’s very apt students. In press materials, Schwartz said Bode offered “no serious reasoning.”
In 2024, Newman sent his Old Man for assessment the University of Cambridge‘s Hamilton Kerr Institute—which did not negate Bode’s assessment. The work arrived in Chicago last year. Now it’s hanging alongside the panel Old Man for the first time in 400 years.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631), at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Using cutting edge tech, the Art Institute of Chicago confirmed that this canvas comes from Rembrandt’s studio, based on its pigments. The artworks’ consistent silhouette and details—like three perfectly placed eyelashes—indicate that whoever painted the canvas must have had the panel handy. The museum’s team believes the panel is the original, because x-rays reveal Rembrandt worked through its composition. The canvas contains no such edits.
The Art Institute found further differences. Although the canvas’s eyelashes are painted on, the panel’s have been scratched out from a layer of dark paint atop. The earring on the panel, meanwhile, shines thanks to three decisive brushstrokes—versus the numerous smaller strokes providing its canvas-bound glint. What’s more, while the pigments throughout both are consistent, the blue in the panel’s costume permeates the whole figure on the canvas.
But, if Rembrandt had to remake the work for a customer, as French critic Roger de Plies wrote Dutch artists were apt to do, Schwartz said it makes sense that he would’ve had a pupil paint it. But the canvas Old Man‘s “outstanding quality” and lack of corrections makes Schwartz think Rembrandt did it himself, right after completing the original.
“The small differences in execution that the Chicago researchers have found between the two paintings do not disprove this,” Schwartz said. “They are more likely to be freedoms that the master could allow himself and that a pupil copyist would not.”
After the canvas’ Chicago outing ends June 16, it’s due to go on view at the Friedenstein Foundation in Gotha, Germany, as part of its exhibition, “Rembrandt 1632. Creation of a Brand.” Reports indicate that the canvas will still not be attributed directly to Rembrandt.
Earlier this month, experts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam identified the 1633 painting Vision of Zacharias in the Temple as a work by Rembrandt. Their study, leveraging technical and stylistic analysis, puts to rest six decades’ worth of doubt surrounding the work.