Portrait of a Man with a Breastplate and Plumed Hat

In 1892 Louisine and Henry Havemeyer bought this portrait in Paris from Paul Durand-Ruel, the dealer who was at that moment building the market for the Impressionists. They bought it as a Rembrandt, and they bought it with its pendant, a woman on a canvas of the same size, about 121 by 98 centimetres. The two had come down together from the collection of Baron Achille Seillière and then his daughter. A Dutch pair of this kind normally records a married couple, each sitter on a separate canvas, hung side by side on one wall.

Both kept Rembrandt's name for decades, and Abraham Bredius still listed this one as his. The Metropolitan Museum now gives the pair to an unnamed painter working in Rembrandt's manner in the mid- to late 1640s, close enough to the studio to have passed for the master.

Louisine Havemeyer left them to the museum in 1929, still together. The woman's portrait is in this catalogue as well.