Bildnis des Herman Doomer

Rembrandt signed and dated this in 1640, in the Amsterdam years when commissions were still pouring in. The sitter, Herman Doomer, was no merchant prince but a craftsman who had grown well-off making furniture and picture frames veneered in ebony, a dark tropical wood that had become fashionable in the wealthy Dutch city. The connection ran close. Doomer's son Lambert was training as a painter in Rembrandt's own studio around this time. Rembrandt painted Doomer's wife, Baertje Martens, as a companion piece, and that portrait is now in St. Petersburg while this one is in New York. Notice the soft fall of light on the white collar and the grey hair, the quiet attention Rembrandt gave a man who himself worked in fine, exacting materials.