Portrait of a Man Rising from his Chair

Catalogue number: Bredius 172.

This large Portrait of a Man Rising from his Chair is a pendant to the Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan (Bredius 341). The paintings were separated some time before 1793.

In Holland, the design of pendant (or pair) portraits remained conservative through the 1620s, in part drawing on the heritage of Spanish court portraiture, and in part on the more recent influence of formal models from England. The present portraits, in which the figures are presented to the viewer and connected with each other in inventive way, represent Rembrandt's departure from the conservative norm. His experiments in this vein were partly inspired by Anthony van Dyck.