Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts

Rembrandt painted the Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts in 1631, one of the earliest and finest of his Amsterdam portraits, painted in his first year in the city and demonstrating immediately the qualities that would make him the most sought-after portraitist of the Dutch Golden Age. Ruts was a merchant in the Muscovy trade — dealing in Russian furs, skins, and other Eastern commodities — and Rembrandt's rendering of his sumptuous fur-trimmed cloak is among the finest textile passages in Dutch portraiture. The fur's complex surface — warm shadows, highlighted edges, the differentiated textures of various animal pelts — demanded exactly the kind of technical virtuosity that Rembrandt was developing in his Leiden tronies and that he now applied to the commercial portrait market. The Frick Collection in New York, one of the finest small museums in the world, holds the painting as part of its representation of Dutch portraiture from the seventeenth century. The canvas's exceptional condition and the precision of its characterization make it one of the most admired Rembrandt portraits outside the Netherlands.

The extraordinary rendering of the sable fur hat and collar shows Rembrandt at his most technically brilliant, each strand of fur catching the light differently, while the merchant's alert, intelligent face is painted with precise psychological insight.