Rembrandt’s Self Portrait Drawings

The Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn created nearly one hundred self portraits during his 63 years of life. Roughly 40 of these self portraits were oil paintings. The rest were drawings and etchings. This was, and is, a fairly unusual number of self portraits for an artist without a smartphone. He might have made self portraits to practice rendering facial expressions, while he also carried out his own self expressions and examinations. He might have made self portraits because they were free, whereas models cost money. He could have also been making them as a kind of self promotion. A self portrait would allow him to advertise his skill, mark himself as memorable, and possibly even earn some cash for the sale.

Below you’ll see a couple of ink drawings and then a couple of related etchings, roughly mirror image from the ink sketches, as the plate he drew the final image onto would have then printed in reverse.

Sketch vs Etching

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Sketches – just a few

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Etchings

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