Rembrandt that was dismissed as a fake may be genuine after all
A REMBRANDT painting dismissed as a fake is to go on display after 40 years after it emerged it was made from the same tree as other works by the artist.
The painting written off by experts will be displayed again after being re- vealed as an authentic piece from the Dutch master’s workshop.
Head of a Bearded Man is a small painting the size of a postcard which depicts a forlorn and aged figure, and was for years consigned to the basement of Ashmolean Museum in Ox- ford.
But the museum will now put the painting on display this week after it was reassessed and found to be from the correct time period.
Analysis of the oak panel piece revealed that it was painted on to the same piece of timber as another of the Renaissance artist’s works.
The painting was bequeathed to the Ashmolean in 1951, but in 1981 it was examined and dismissed as an imitation by the Rembrandt Research Project and hidden away.
“They saw it in the flesh and decided it wasn’t a Rembrandt painting,” Ashmolean curator An Van Camp told the
Guardian. “They said it might be an imitator painting in the style of Rembrandt and is possibly made before the end of the 17th century, so not even in Rembrandt’s lifetime.”
The painting was placed in the basement, but after Ms Van Camp took up her role at the museum in 2015, she decided the piece should be re-examined.
Its subject matter and style were deemed too close a match to the Dutch painter’s works to be totally dismissed. His early works were collected for a display at the Ashmolean, giving an opportunity to look again at the piece.
Head of a Bearded Man is painted with oils on to an oak panel, and portrays some of the tropes of its supposed Dutch creator. She said: “It is what Rembrandt does. He does these tiny head studies of old men with forlorn, melancholic, pensive looks.”
The piece was dated by leading dendrochronologist Peter Klein and found to have been created between around 1620 and 1630, pointing towards its origins in Rembrandt’s time.
Additional results revealed that the painting was crafted from the same wooden panel as another Rembrandt work, Andromeda Chained to the Rocks. This work hangs in Mauritshuis in the Hague.
Further studies will be undertaken to ascertain whether the portrait was painted by Rembrandt himself.