Rembrandt: Titus at his Desk

     

Rembrandt, Titus at his Desk, Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam

Rembrandt’s portrait of his son Titus is signed and dated “Rembrandt f[ecit] 1655”. The painting was first recorded in 1806, in an English private collection, and was eventually acquired by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in 1938. We see little Titus sitting alone behind a big wooden desk in a darkened room, with paper, pens and an inkwell. But a mere statement of the subject does not convey the magical quality of this painting, which celebrates the poetry to be found in simple things.

 The composition is in the form of a pyramid, with the desk as its base and Titus’s head as its apex. The painting is divided into two halves – Titus and the desk – which are linked by the penholder and portable inkwell that Titus dangles down in front of the desk. A sense of space is created, not by a use of perspective, but by placing Titus behind the desk, which is pushed against the picture plane, and by subtle gradations of colour, so that Titus emerges from the dark background. Space is also created by the light which falls from an unseen high window on the left, illuminating the face of Titus and the front of the desk, and casting shadows.

The beauty of shadows, the contrast between light and darkness, is a vital element in Rembrandt’s art, not just because of an “influence” from Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, but because Rembrandt must have loved it. Surely related to this is Rembrandt’s love for weathered old objects which had the patina of age. He collected antiques and unusual old clothes, and made a drawing of the old town hall of Amsterdam, not the new one (White 116). Titus is sitting at a battered old desk which is deeply marked with stains and scratches.

 This old desk is built up with thick layers of paint, using bold brushstrokes to convey the texture of the wood. Rembrandt has also dragged thinner layers of paint across the surface, exposing streaks of the colour lying beneath (a technique called “scumbling”), and has scratched into the paint with the blunt end of his brush. In this “rough” and expressive mode of painting, Rembrandt’s only rival was Frans Hals, although Hals’s method was quite different, since he built his paintings with thinner paint layers. Another vital feature of Rembrandt’s technique is his wonderful combination of colours. The brown of the desk harmonises with the red of Titus’s sleeves, the red of his cap, and the auburn of his hair. These warm colours are complemented by the touch of green in Titus’s jacket.

Apart from the desk, the only “props” in the painting are Titus’s paper, pens and inkwell. Rembrandt throws all our attention onto the figure of Titus, whose face is illuminated against the dark background. He looks thoughtful and preoccupied, with shadows round his eyes, leaning forward to stare at something we cannot see. Rembrandt captures a brief moment in time, for we feel that Titus will soon cease his reflections and return to the work on his desk. Titus looks so small and frail behind the desk, is dressed exquisitely, and has long, curly hair. Here we can feel Rembrandt’s love for Titus, the only surviving child of his wife Saskia, who had died in 1642.

An important consideration is how the portrait of Titus might have looked when displayed in a seventeenth-century Dutch house. The painting is framed in a dark, wooden frame which, although not original, is appropriate for the plain setting of a typical Dutch interior. The figure of Titus is almost life-size, and in a dark room, lit only by candles, Rembrandt’s visible brushstrokes would have become less visible, so that the figure would almost have appeared to be real. It must have been like entering the presence of a living person.

Titus has sheets of paper, a leather folder to store paper, a trimmed quill pen, a penholder, and a portable inkwell. These could be used either for writing or for drawing. So what is Titus doing? Most commentators assume he is writing. For example, Roger Fry says that “the boy is at his lessons” and Rudi Fuchs says that “he has just stopped writing and is now thinking” (Fuchs 64). Jakob Rosenberg, however, thinks that Titus “gazes out at something he is drawing”(Rosenberg 101). And it is indeed most probable that he is drawing. Paper was expensive, and if Titus had been “at his lessons” he would have been more likely to use an erasable slate. Rembrandt must have hoped that Titus would follow in his footsteps, and here he portrays him as a budding artist. Painters’ apprentices could start as young as ten (Wetering Rembrandt: The Painter at Work 49). A beginner would probably use charcoal, because mistakes could be more easily corrected, but Titus has already progressed to a quill pen, a tool Rembrandt himself used for many of his own drawings (Haak 21-22). The whiteness of the paper suggests that Titus may be using an expensive paper called “Chinese white”. If we wanted to follow the scholars who are constantly looking for symbolism in Dutch pictures, we could cite Joseph Cats, the Dutch moralist, who wrote that “a child is like a sheet of white paper” (Bedaux 49). But that is surely not relevant here. 

Jacques De Gheyn II, Woman and Child (drawing), Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin

Samuel van Hoogstraten, Self-Portrait, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

As a point of comparison, it is worth looking at a drawing by Jacques de Gheyn II, possibly depicting his wife and son. The drawing is usually entitled Woman and Child Looking at a Picture Book (c. 1599), but if we look closely we can see that they are actually looking at an artist’s sketchbook. The boy is pointing to a drawing of a tree, and there is a quill pen, a penholder and an inkwell on the table. Either the boy has made the drawing himself or he is looking at a sampleof his father’s work. Another picture of a young artist is Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Self-Portrait Writing or Drawing at a Window (c. 1647). Jonathan Bikker says that Hoogstraten is “more likely” to be writing (Bikker 205), but if we look carefully we can see that he is drawing a church spire, perhaps the Westerkerk or the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam. 

Rembrandt, Titus (etching)

Rembrandt, Titus, Wallace Collection, London

Titus sitting at his desk is wearing a beret, the traditional headgear of an artist. Several other pictures of Titus depict him with a beret, and one of them also shows him wearing a gold chain, sometimes awarded to an artist. Berets were also worn by scholars and philosophers, and Rembrandt is suggesting that art is an intellectual activity (Chapman 49-50). As in Rembrandt’s pictures of scholars at their studies, Titus is sitting contemplating, alone in a darkened room. He is not shown in the act of drawing, but observing and thinking, like the artist in Rembrandt’s The Artist in his Studio (1629). Titus is probably committing the thing he is drawing to memory before he tries to get it down on paper. This importance of memory for an artist was stressed by Karel Van Mander when he wrote that artists must learn to depict “what they have already seen painted in their mind’s eye” - Schilderboeck, 1604 (Wetering Rembrandt: The Painter at Work 27).  Rembrandt himself must have relied heavily on memory. He did so in this portrait of Titus at his Desk, which is unlikely to have been painted from life, since, as Jonathan Bikker says, “it is impossible to get this close to somebody [Titus] facing you without them noticing” (Bikker 203). Thus Titus at his Desk can be said to be realistic, but based on memory and imagination. Rembrandt has also used the picture as a vehicle to express his ideas about artistic creation. 

Rembrandt, Saint Anastasius, National Museum, Stockholm

Rembrandt (?), Man Reading at a Table, National Gallery London 

Titus did in reality create some artworks. There exist two drawings signed by Titus: a sketch of Flora, goddess of flowers (with corrections by Rembrandt), and a drawing of the hunter Meleager presenting the head of the Calydon boar to Atalanta - a story from Ovid (Welcker 269 -273).  The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions lists three paintings (now lost) by Titus: a picture of three dogs, a still-life of a book, and a “head” (tronie) of the Virgin Mary. (This inventory is printed – in the original Dutch -  as an appendix to Fuchs, Rembrandt en Amsterdam).  Gary Schwartz speculates that some Vanitas still-lifes (also lost), retouched by Rembrandt and listed in the inventory, may be by Titus (Schwartz Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings 297).  And Josua Bruyn speculates that Titus may be the painter of an anonymous Fragment with Saints Peter and John, in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum (Bruyn 714-718). Sadly, this is all that is known of Titus as an artist.

Little is known of Titus’s artworks and not much more about Titus himself. It has even been denied that the boy in Titus at his Desk is actually Titus, because there is no direct evidence that it is him. However, as Ernst van de Wetering points out, the boy in the painting resembles Rembrandt and Saskia, and the same boy (at different ages) was painted many times by Rembrandt (Wetering Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited 631). So we can safely assume it is Titus. There is also a problem regarding the age of the boy in the painting. The painting is dated 1655, when Titus would have been fourteen, but the boy looks much younger than that. It has been suggested that Rembrandt worked on the painting for several years, or that Titus looked young for his age, or that Rembrandt deliberately made him look younger, “as if the father was lingering over the fondest memories of childhood” (Schama 610). Again, it is Ernst van de Wetering who gives the most likely explanation, when he says that the picture was probably painted well before 1655. Technical analysis by the Rembrandt Research Project has shown that the signature and the date were added later, perhaps when the painting was sold (Wetering Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited 631). Van de Wetering suggests that the picture was painted around 1651, when Titus would have been ten, partly because Titus at his Desk is painted in a similar style to Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window of 1651 (Wetering Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited 632). The same girl is depicted in Girl with a Broom, also dated 1651.

Rembrandt, Girl at a Window

Rembrandt, Girl with a Broom

The fact that Titus at his Desk may have been sold raises the possibility that it is not an ordinary portrait, because why would anyone have wanted to buy the portrait of such an obscure person as Titus? Perhaps the painting should be regarded not just as a straightforward portrait but also as a tronie (a “head”). Tronies were paintings of interesting character types. They were often based on real people, but were not intended primarily as portraits, because the figures were usually shown playing a role or wearing fancy dress. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) is the most famous tronie. Rembrandt and his pupils were famous for their tronies, especially heads of old men. Some late seventeenth century inventories published by Bredius list a few portraits and tronies by Rembrandt, all with low estimates, including a “strange tronie” valued at just one guilder (Bredius 263-270).  Titus at his Desk could be seen as a tronie of a young scholar or artist. It does indeed have a slightly “cute” and sentimental flavour, and it is not surprising that reproductions of it are sometimes hung in children’s bedrooms in Holland (Giltaij). There is not always a clear distinction between a tronie and a portrait. Rembrandt’s painting of Titus in a Monk’s Habit (c. 1660) can be seen both as a portrait of Titus and as a tronie of a monk. Scholars are divided on whether The Merry Drinker (c. 1628/30) by Frans Hals should be regarded as a tronie or an unorthodox portrait. Even seventeenth-century people did not always make a clear distinction between tronies and portraits. Another inventory of the period lists “An old man’s tronie, being the konterfeitsel [portrait] of the father of Mr Rembrandt” (Schwartz “Motions of the Countenance” 113).  A painting could begin life as a portrait, but later take on a new identity as a tronie, and perhaps this was the case with Titus at his Desk. 

Rembrandt, Titus in a Monk's Habit, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans Hals, The Merry Drinker, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A tronie can be regarded as both artificial and realistic, since it is based on a real person. In a similar way, the borrowing of motifs from earlier art does not mean that a picture cannot also be realistic. Scholars tend to disagree on the extent to which Rembrandt used such sources. Svetlana Alpers says that Rembrandt’s art “lacks sources” (Alpers 72-74), whereas Jonathan Bicker says he used a “staggering” number of sources. Rembrandt’s use of sources has probably been exaggerated.  Kenneth Clark claims that the pose of Rembrandt’s companion, Hendrickje, in Hendrickje at an Open Door (c. 1656/57) is taken from a print of Palma Vecchio’s Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1518/20) (Clark 132). But x-rays of Rembrandt’s painting show that he changed his mind about the pose while he was working on the painting (Brown 270), which may imply that he devised the pose himself. Sources that have been suggested for Titus at his Desk include the young Saint John writing his gospel, the figure of Study from Cesare Ripa’s book Iconologia, and Durer’s print of Melancholia. But none of these bears much resemblance to the little boy in the painting, and we can conclude that Titus at his Desk is original in conception and realistic in style. 

Titus grew up to a troubled inheritance. After Rembrandt became bankrupt in 1656, the guild regulations meant that he was no longer allowed to sell his work. To get round this restriction, Hendrickje and Titus set up a business selling artworks, with Rembrandt as their sole employee. Sadly, Hendrickje died, probably from the plague, in 1663, and Titus died, probably from the same cause, in 1668, at the age of only twenty-seven. Rembrandt followed him to the grave a year later.

Works Cited

Alpers, Svetlana, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988)

Bailey, Anthony, Rembrandt’s House (London: J.M. Dent, 1978)

Bedaux, Jan Baptist and Rudi Ekkart (editors), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700 (Ghent: Ludion, 2000)

Bikker, Jonathan, and others, Rembrandt: The Late Works (London: National Gallery, 2014) 

Bredius, A. “Rembrandtiana”, Oud Holland, Vol.42 (1925) pp. 263-270. 

Brown, Christopher, and others, Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop (New Haven & London: Yale UP, 1991)

Bruyn, Josua,“An unknown assistant in Rembrandt’s workshop in the early 1660s”, The Burlington Magazine, Vol.132 (1990), pp.714-718.

Chapman, H. Perry, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990)

Clark, Kenneth, Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance (London: John Murray, 1966)

Fuchs, R.H., Rembrandt en Amsterdam (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 1968)

Giltaij, Jeroen, Curator’s Choice: Rembrandt’s Titus [5-minute film] www.vimeo.com 

Haak, Bob, Rembrandt Drawings (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976)

Rosenberg, Jakob, Rembrandt: Life and Work (Oxford: Phaidon, 4^th ed. 1980)

Schama, Simon, Rembrandt’s Eyes (London: Penguin, 1999)

Schwartz, Frederic, “The motions of the countenance: Rembrandt’s early portraits and the tronie” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No.17/18, Spring-Autumn 1989, pp.89-116.

Schwartz, Gary, Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings (London: Penguin, 1991)

Welcker, A. “Titus van Rhijn als teekenaar”, Oud Holland, Vol.55, No.6 (1938) pp. 268-273

Wetering, Ernst van de, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work (Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2000)

Wetering, Ernst van de (for the Rembrandt Research Project), Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited: A Complete Survey (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014)

White, Christopher, Rembrandt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1984)