The Polish Rider
| The Polish Rider | |
|---|---|
| Polish: Lisowczyk | |
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| Artist | Rembrandt |
| Year | 1655 |
| Location | The Frick Collection, New York |
The Polish Rider is a seventeenth-century painting, usually dated to the 1650s, of a young man traveling on horseback through a murky landscape, now in The Frick Collection in New York. When the painting was sold by Zdzisław Tarnowski to Henry Frick in 1910, there was consensus that the work was by the Dutch painter Rembrandt. This attribution has since been contested, though this remains a minority view.
There has also been debate over whether the painting was intended as a portrait of a particular person, living or historical, and if so of whom, or if not, what it was intended to represent. Both the quality of the painting and its slight air of mystery are commonly recognized, though parts of the background are very sketchily painted or unfinished.
The first western scholar to discuss the painting was Wilhelm von Bode who in his History of Dutch Painting (1883) stated that it was a Rembrandt dating from his "late" period, that is, 1654. Somewhat later, Abraham Bredius examined the picture quite closely and had no doubts that its author was Rembrandt. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Alfred von Wurzbach suggested that Rembrandt's student Aert de Gelder might have been the author, but his opinion was generally disregarded. Throughout most of the twentieth century, there was general agreement that the painting was indeed by Rembrandt and even Julius S. Held, who at one time questioned its Polish connection, never doubted Rembrandt's authorship. However, in 1984, Josua Bruyn, then a member of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) tentatively suggested that certain characteristics of the work of Willem Drost, another student of Rembrandt, could be observed in the painting. Though the mysterious and somewhat solemn expression on the Rider's brilliantly painted face point to Rembrandt,The Polish Rider is unlike Rembrandt's other work in certain other ways. In particular, Rembrandt rarely worked on equestrian paintings, the only other known equestrian portrait in Rembrandt's work being the Portrait of Frederick Rihel, 1663 (National Gallery, London).
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