THE POLISH RIDER
This is my version of the Rembrandt painting popularly known as “The Polish Rider”. The picture, which first entered Poland in the eighteenth century, has been the subject of intense investigation and is still not well understood. Polish scholars stress the Polish connection in terms of both costume and subject. Still others insist the work is a commissioned equestrian portrait of a young Polish nobleman who has studied in Holland. Because the painting is dated at the time of Rembrandt’s intense interest in Eastern things, the identity of the equestrian hero is most likely found in the Old Testament and is not an actual portrait at all but an historical painting.
This is one of only a very few of equestrian (horseback) portraits by Rembrandt. Notice the use of chiarruscuro with the evening light highlighting the rider’s face and costume. Also notice the use of the diagonal element again: the rider’s right forearm, the arrows, the right thigh and the horse’s right foreleg comprising one diagonal. This diagonal is paralleled by that diagonal passing through the heads of the rider, horse and left arm.
Rembrandt painted “The Polish Rider” c. 1655. I painted this copy in 1978. The original hangs in the Frick Collection in N.Y.C.
Pastel on paper 1978