This second plate, now housed in Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, illustrates another of Rembrandt’s fascinations to dominate his art: the self-portrait. The artist completed over seventy-five self-portraits in oil and it has been estimated that 10% of his entire artistic output was dedicated to the depiction of his own facial features. This offers a unique opportunity of surveying a countenance gradually changing over the course of forty years. Rembrandt’s self-portraits have left posterity a visual autobiography of an artist that is simply without parallel in the history of Western art.
It is believed he had started making drawings and etchings of himself in 1628 and this habit would not stop until his death in 1669. Rembrandt often used his self-portraits for practice in order to discover for himself the range of expressions the human face is capable. As models could be expensive and impatient subjects, painting himself was a much more financial and feasible option for a young and aspiring artist to use. From the period of his first studio in Leiden , Rembrandt felt he needed a better understanding of the scope of human emotions, which he could then use to depict in his subject pictures. Also, there was a large demand for head and shoulders portraits at the time, marked by a strong facial expression – these works were known as tronie paintings. Rembrandt therefore decided to combine the self-portrait with the tronie genre to develop his own original style. In time, he realised that more normal and less pronounced and emotional portraits of himself were marketable.
The Liverpool Self-Portrait demonstrates the features of both genres. The hallmarks of a tronie are clearly shown by the conventional head and shoulders depiction of the artist, whilst the somewhat comical, wry look and twisted mouth of the artist reveal the study of expression that the self-portray affords the artist. Interestingly, not long after its completion, the canvas was purchased by Robert Ker, the Earl of Ancram, who then gave it to King Charles I. Therefore it is widely believed to be the first work by to leave The Netherlands and arrive in Britain.