Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) Dutch

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 958


As a young artist, De Lairesse admired Rembrandt’s manner and sat for this portrait. Rembrandt directed his unsparing scrutiny to the sitter’s features, disfigured by what was likely congenital syphilis. This condition eventually caused De Lairesse to go blind, and he devoted the rest of his life to writings on art in which he disparagingly likened Rembrandt’s thick application of paint to "liquid mud on the canvas." The portrait offers poignant testimony to a moment of contact between artists who came to represent diametrically opposed aesthetic camps.

#4780. Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse

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Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), Oil on canvas

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Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), Oil on canvas
Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), Oil on canvas
Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), Oil on canvas
Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam), Oil on canvas

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