Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window (1648): Art, History and Details

Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window (1648) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In this late self-portrait—one of more than 80 created by Rembrandt van Rijn—the artist shows himself informally posed at a studio window. He uses a needle to draw into a copper etching plate and gazes directly at the viewer as if interrupted in the process of creating a work of art. The window provides the light required to complete this task, but it also reveals the isolation of art making by juxtaposing Rembrandt’s interior space with the expansive landscape and external world from which he has sequestered himself.

Object facts

• Title: Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window
• Date: 1648
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching, drypoint, and engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 17.3 x 14.5 cm (6 13/16 x 5 11/16 in.); Platemark: 15.6 x 12.9 cm (6 1/8 x 5 1/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1934.350

A detail from the museum

In order to show himself with the direct gaze that characterizes this self-portrait, Rembrandt translated a view seen while studying himself in a mirror.

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Salsbury, Britany. “Open Windows.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 26.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.