Half-length figure of a man with beard and beret

Half-Length Figure of a Man with Beard and Beret from 1661 in the Hermitage is a late tronie in which the bearded elderly man in a beret occupies the same timeless character space as Rembrandt's apostle paintings of the same year. The simplicity of the composition — a direct gaze, warm light on a bearded face, the identifying beret — achieves through economy of means the psychological concentration that elaborately staged portrait compositions could not. By 1661 Rembrandt was producing his most technically free work: thin transparent darks; concentrated impasto built up in specific areas; the whole canvas animated by a sense of paint being worked rather than paint being applied. The Hermitage's collection of Rembrandt's late figure studies, assembled primarily through Catherine the Great's purchasing program, provides one of the most comprehensive surveys of his late manner outside the Rijksmuseum.

Rembrandt's late technique is fully evident in the rough, impastoed handling of paint, with thick strokes building form and texture while warm light models the face with extraordinary subtlety.