REMBRANDT HARMENSZOON VAN RIJN (l6θ6-l669) was the foremost artist of the Golden Age of Dutch painting and one of the most brilliant of all European artists.
A “realist” who eschewed classical perfection and decorum to depict life as it really was, complete with its flaws and its mundane side, he was a master of the psychological portrait, with an extraordinary capacity to infuse his canvases with life, vitality, and movement, to express personality, to raise contradictory emotions, and even to shock.
Yet there is always something solemn and mysterious about his pictures, especially his portraits, and the people depicted are usually thoughtful, and never without a certain depth. This immediacy, personalism, and depth are evident in almost all of his some 300-600 acknowledged paintings (critics have exposed many imitators and shrunk the canon over the years), and many hundreds of drawings, sketches, and prints, which are prized by collectors and museums all over the world.1In eastern Europe too Rembrandt has always been highly esteemed, and for a long time the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg had one of the largest collections of his paintings in the world. During the twentieth century, however, parts of this trove were sold off or dispersed in other ways, while the Dutch, anxious to preserve their artistic heritage, conscientiously reassembled as much of it as they could. Today in Amsterdam the Rijksmuseum holds the most Rembrandt paintings in the world and the Rembrandt House Museum the biggest assemblage of his prints.2
In Poland, patrons have been collecting Rembrandts for many years. In addition to many of his prints and drawings, at least three of his paintings grace Polish museums: Landscape with the Good Samaritan (Czartoryski Museum in Cracow) and Scholar at a Lectern and Girl in a Hat (both in the Royal Castle Museum, Warsaw). The last two belonged to the last king of Poland, StanisIaw Augustus Poniatowski (reigned 1764-95), an avid collector and patron of the arts. Poland entered Rembrandt's wuvre during his lifetime, as we see in The Polish Nobleman (1637) (National Gallery, Washington, DC), believed perhaps a portrait of the Protestant diplomat Andrzej Rej, and The Polish Rider (c. 1655) (Frick Collection, New York City), long considered a portrait of an unknown person. The much-discussed Polish Rider, exceptional in every way, yet immediately recognizable as the master's, is the subject of the present chapter.3