Portrait of a Bearded Old Man

By the middle of the 1650s the stream of wealthy Amsterdammers who had once lined up to sit for Rembrandt had thinned, and within two years he would be selling off his house and his art collection to satisfy his creditors. In that same stretch he painted a run of old men like this one, not paying clients so much as faces he wanted to study. An elderly man with a long white beard sits in a dark coat and a black beret, most of him sinking into shadow while a low light catches his forehead and one side of his face. Up close the paint is broad and openly worked, the beard built from loose dry strokes. Rembrandt never set down who he was.