Portrait of a Young Man, possibly Titus

This 1663 portrait, possibly of Titus van Rijn, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, captures Rembrandt's son at approximately twenty-two — a young man of the generation who would have grown up watching his father's social and financial decline while inheriting his artistic education. If the identification with Titus is correct, this belongs to the decade of father-son portraits that include the famous Titus at His Desk (1655, Boijmans Van Beuningen) and Titus as a Monk (1660, Pushkin Museum). Titus worked in the art dealing business that Hendrickje Stoffels had organized under her name to protect it from Rembrandt's creditors, and the young man depicted here has the quality of someone who has grown up in the orbit of serious art-making without the protected leisure that other young men of means enjoyed. The Dulwich Picture Gallery acquired the work as part of its founding collection, assembled in the early nineteenth century as a resource for training British painters.

Rembrandt renders the young man with extraordinary warmth, using soft, luminous light and gentle brushwork that convey paternal affection while capturing the individual character of the sitter.