Autoportrait au chevalet

Rembrandt painted this in 1660, and the timing matters. Two years earlier he had gone insolvent; his big house on the Breestraat and most of his collection had been sold off to pay creditors, and he was now living in rented rooms in a poorer part of Amsterdam. Here he shows himself not as a gentleman but as a working painter, palette, brushes and maulstick in hand, in a plain cap and studio smock. The light falls hard on his lined face and leaves the rest in shadow. He was in his mid-fifties, and he would keep painting himself, unsparingly, right up to his death in 1669.