An Old Man with Folded Arms

Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 10.8, 28.4 and 15.2 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has irregularly spaced saw marks on the middle plank. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1605. The panel could have been ready for use by 1616, but a date in or after 1622 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground extends over the edges of the support. The first, thick layer is a dense opaque white. The second ground is a creamy white, consisting of white pigment with an addition of translucent warm brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography and infrared reflectography revealed thin, dark, schematic lines in the face and around the contours of the hands, also partly visible to the naked eye, and additional lines within the folds of the clothing.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support. The composition was built up from dark to light with thin, fluid, opaque paint, applied wet in wet throughout. The background and the greenish-brown clothing were executed first, leaving reserves for the head and hands, and are sketchy with open brushwork. The dark paint in the shadows was placed with short parallel strokes resembling hatching. A cross-section shows that the background is a semi-opaque, dark brown-grey layer consisting of white and black pigment particles with an addition of bright orange, red and warm brown pigment particles. Finally, the flesh was added and the hair worked up simultaneously. Both were more finely executed, yet still with visible brushstrokes. Red glazes were used to deepen the shadows in the flesh. The paint layers are generally smooth, with slight impasto in the white shirt and some highlights. A pentimento is present in the thumb of the right hand.
Emma Boyce, 2023

Fair. The joins have been reinforced with strips of canvas. The lower section of the left join is not level and the panel is slightly warped. Cracks are apparent in the ground and paint layers of the middle plank, due to two vertical splits at the bottom (approx. 4 and 6 cm), as well as along the joins. Numerous small losses are present around the perimeter of the panel, particularly along the bottom edge. Disturbing fillings and retouching cover losses along the joins as well as an area by the left shoulder (approx. 2 x 4 cm). The paint layer is severely abraded throughout the dark parts and in the shadow on the left elbow, the latter generously retouched. The thick varnish is cracked and has yellowed, and though it is glossy it saturates poorly. There is no varnish on the top and bottom sections concealed by the frame (approx. 8 and 1.5 cm).

…; from the dealers B. Asscher and H. Koetser, Amsterdam, fl. 2,500, to the museum, with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1920 ¹¹Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1920 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 4.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2841

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The museum bought this picture in 1920 because it wanted to have at least one representative work by every seventeenth-century artist.⁴⁴Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1920 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 4. This study of an unknown man, though, is from Simon Kick’s early career, before he made his name with genre scenes.⁵⁵On Kick’s work see M.C.C. Kersten, ‘Interieurstukken met soldaten tussen circa 1625 en 1660: Een verkenning’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 183-217, esp. pp. 194-95; J. Rosen, ‘A Great Minor Master: The Robbery by Simon Kick in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie: With an Appendix Including a Complete Catalogue of Paintings by Simon Kick (1603-1652)’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 49 (2007), pp. 85-98. The long-haired, bearded figure features in many of his tronies, including a signed one of 1637,⁶⁶Present whereabouts unknown; catalogue for the sale, New York (Christie’s), 24 January 2003, no. 53 (ill.). and another of roughly the same date which Sumowski has convincingly attributed to Kick.⁷⁷Sankt Gallen, Kunstmuseum; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1639. Mention has been made of the affinity of depictions like these to the early Salomon Koninck.⁸⁸W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1630. The old men with their fleshy hands, the massive drapery folds and the chiaroscuro also recall the study heads of the late 1620s by the young Jan Lievens. The present figure’s physiognomy is even related to that of the model used by Lievens for his Head of an Old Man of around 1640.⁹⁹Private collection; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1916, no. 1277. Cf. also ibid., p. 1893, no. 1254, p. 1902, no. 1263.

The figure in Kick’s aforementioned 1637 tronie is characterized as East Asian by his turban, but here his greenish-brown clothing has no exotic or historicizing touches. Folded arms of this kind are also found in a painting of a monk and in a picture of a man with a hand in front of his chest, both of which were made by someone in the circle around the early Lievens and Rembrandt.¹⁰¹⁰Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1878, no. 1239. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 567, no. C20. The positioning of the arms in the Rijksmuseum work may be an expression of contrition as described by Ripa in the text accompanying his personification of conversion: ‘She has her hands crossed on her breast, displaying signs of great remorse and regret.’¹¹¹¹J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 570; C. Ripa, Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des verstands, trans. D.P. Pers, Amsterdam 1644, p. 34. The pose also often signified religious contemplation and humility on the part of hermits and penitents, as in the extremely popular print series published in 1612 after designs by Abraham Bloemaert.¹²¹²For example, M.G. Roethlisberger and M.J. Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons: Paintings and Prints, II, Doornspijk 1993, fig. 274, no. 173, fig. 299, no. 197, fig. 304, no. 201.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

J. Rosen, ‘A Great Minor Master: The Robbery by Simon Kick in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie: With an Appendix Including a Complete Catalogue of Paintings by Simon Kick (1603-1652)’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 49 (2007), pp. 85-98, esp. p. 98, no. 27

1921, p. 436, no. 1350a; 1976, p. 320, no. A 2841

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2023, 'Simon Kick, An Old Man with Folded Arms, 1639', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12037