This old man’s aged face, with its irregular features, is alive with emotion as he gazes upward toward the left, his mouth partially open. Light caresses his face, articulating the wrinkled skin of his furrowed brow and glinting off his eyes. Rhythmic strands of hair from his full, flowing beard and moustache further enliven the image. Lievens painted this memorable work in Leiden, at a time when he and Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669) were establishing themselves as two of the finest young artists in the Netherlands. They shared an interest in the depiction of tronies, or head and shoulder studies of young and old individuals. Tronies were character studies rather than portraits of specific people, and these two artists painted them to evoke a wide range of human emotions. Sometimes these works served as models for larger-scale paintings, but more often they seem to have been created, and valued, as independent works of art.
Lievens painted, drew, and etched numerous tronies during the late 1620s and early 1630s. He was particularly gifted in this type of work and knew how to exploit his painting techniques to enhance the animated character of a sitter’s appearance. As in this instance, he indicated the transparency of the elderly man’s skin with thin GlazingApplying transparent layers of paint that influence the colors or tonalities of the layers below., while suggesting the roughness of its texture by applying thick impastos with quick strokes of the brush. He also knew how to articulate the hairs in the man’s beard and moustache by scratching through white impastos with the blunt end of his brush. On the other hand, he could paint very broadly, as seen in the gray jacket and beret, which he executed with broad, smooth strokes to provide a subdued but solid visual framework for the focus of the painting, the man’s expressive face.
A contemporary observer would have seen the beret as an outmoded hat style, found primarily in scholarly dress. The beret thus would have enhanced the “thoughtful” disposition of the man’s expression—the mien of someone who reflects on the world he sees around him. Both Lievens and Rembrandt found that with age came a remarkable sense of character, not only through the creases that line a wizened face, but also in the inner wisdom of one who has experienced the vagaries of life.
Lievens’ tronies were highly regarded by his contemporaries. In his autobiographical account of 1629–1631, Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687) wrote that “in painting the human countenance [Lievens] wreaks miracles.” Huygens also noted that a number of prominent collectors had already acquired examples of such head studies (“works of inestimable value and unrivaled artistry”), including the stadtholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik; his treasurer, Thomas Brouart; the artist Jacques de Gheyn III (Dutch, c. 1596 - 1641); and the Amsterdam tax collector Nicolaas Sohier. Unfortunately, the name of the collector who was the first owner of this remarkable image is not known.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
