Carel Fabritius, 'Young Man in a Fur Cap', 1654

Young Man in a Fur Cap

Carel Fabritius

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This portrait is one of Carel Fabritius’s final works, made in the last year of his short life. He was apprenticed to Rembrandt between 1641 and 1643 and is generally considered one of his most talented pupils.

Although it is impossible to be sure – no documented likeness of Fabritius exists – this is almost certainly a self portrait. The intensity of the gaze and the posture are reminiscent of a series of earlier self portraits made by Rembrandt and his other pupils. The costume he wears, including a soldier’s breastplate, also fits in with this tradition: Rembrandt, for example, painted himself as a soldier in the 1630s.

The fact that it was a self portrait probably wasn’t considered important at the time. Images of personality types or characters in different professions, known as tronies, were popular and artists would use themselves as models to paint from.

In-depth

This portrait is one of Carel Fabritius’s final works, made in the last year of his short life – he died aged just 32. He was apprenticed to Rembrandt in Amsterdam between 1641 and 1643 and is generally considered one of his most talented pupils, but only about a dozen of his paintings survive.

Although it is impossible to be sure – no documented likeness of Fabritius exists – it is almost certainly a self portrait. The intensity of the gaze and the posture are reminiscent of a series of earlier self portraits made by Rembrandt and his other pupils. The costume he wears, including a soldier’s breastplate, also fits in with this tradition: Rembrandt, for example, painted himself as a soldier in the 1630s.

One intriguing aspect is the hat. The title, which would have been given to the painting long after it was made, describes it as fur, but the curls depicted in the rather obscure paintwork make it look more like wool. It’s possible that it had flaps which came down around the ears and neck – a type of hat worn by sailors, and possibly soldiers – but it is too ill-defined to be sure.

The fact that it was a self portrait probably wasn’t always considered important at the time. Self portraits of famous artists, such as Rembrandt, were collected by connoisseurs, but images of types or characters in different professions, known as tronies, were also popular and artists would use themselves as models. Fabritius may well have been painting for this market and would have also no doubt found the discipline of painting himself useful practice. It allowed him to develop his technique and experiment with different effects, materials and facial expressions.

Ten years after he had left Rembrandt’s studio, Fabritius was definitely developing his own style. This painting uses a brighter palette of colours and less dramatic lighting effects than those he had learned in Amsterdam. Instead of looming out of a deep, dark background – like those we see in Rembrandt’s work, including Self Portrait at the Age of 63 – Fabritius has here set himself against a bright but cloudy sky. This is a very unusual backdrop and it creates its own sense of drama, especially because of our low viewpoint (we are slightly below the man, rather than on his level).

It may be that this use of lighter colours and a more airy atmosphere shows the influence of other artists in Delft where Fabritius had moved from Amsterdam in 1650. It was a move which had tragic consequences. On 12 October 1654, the same year that he made this painting, one of the gunpowder stores accidentally detonated and flattened a large part of the city, including the studio where he was working. Fabritius was pulled alive from the rubble but died of his injuries, and it is assumed that many of his pictures were destroyed. The scene of devastation was recorded in a painting by Egbert van der Poel, A View of Delft after the Explosion of 1654.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Young Man in a Fur Cap and a Cuirass (probably a Self Portrait)
Artist: Carel Fabritius
Artist dates: 1622 - 1654
Date made: 1654
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 70.5 × 61.5 cm
Inscription summary: Signed; Dated
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1924
Inventory number: NG4042
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 17th-century Dutch Frame

Provenance

An undescribed portrait of Carel Fabritius was in the inventory of Catharina Scharckens, widow of Cornelis Smout, Amsterdam, 7 December 1654. The National Gallery picture was bought in Bruges from ‘Mareneff’ (presumably Marneffe) by George Rimington of Tynefield, Penrith, for 400 francs. The purchase is said to have been made about 1824 and the picture brought to Tynefield about 1830. (A ‘guerrier au teint basane’ by ‘Fabricius’, without initial, was in the P. J. de Marneffe sale, Brussels, 24 sqq. May 1830 (lot 118), bought by Burton for 60 francs, but this was of completely different size according to the sale catalogue.) It passed to George Rimmington’s youngest son, Reginald, whose wife bequeathed it to her niece, who in turn left it, c. 1910, to her son, T. A. Brewerton of Manchester, T. A. Brewerton sale, London, 12 December 1924 (lot 135), bought for the National Gallery out of the Claude Phillips Fund.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Neil MacLaren, revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School: 1600–1900’, London 1991; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2015

Vermeer and Rembrandt: The Masters of the 17th Century Dutch Golden Age.

Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art

24 October 2015 - 5 January 2016

Mori Arts Centre Gallery

14 January 2016 - 31 March 2016

Bibliography

1925

C. Holmes, 'Carel Fabritius: The New Portrait', The Burlington Magazine, XLVI, 1925, pp. 127-33
1930

C. Hofstede de Groot, Jan Vermeer van Delft en Carel Fabritius, 2nd edn, The Hague 1930
1936

J. Decoen, 'Carel Fabritius', The Burlington Magazine, LXIX/401, 1936, pp. 52-9
1960

Maclaren, Neil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 2 vols, London 1960
1963

H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars, Amsterdam 1963
1967

E. Brochhagen and B. Knüttel, Alte Pinakothek. Holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1967
1968

W. Sumowski, 'Zu einem Gemälde von Carel Fabritius', Pantheon, XXVI, 1968, pp. 278-83
1971

G. Eeckhardt, Selbstbildnisse niederländische Maler des 17.Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1971
1977

J. Mills and R. White, 'Analyses of Paint Media', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, I, 1977, pp. 57-9
1978

M. Milner Kahr, Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century, New York 1978
1979

C. Brown, 'The Reputation of Carel Fabritius', Apollo, CX/214, 1979, pp. 476-81
1983

A. Blankert, G. Jansen and W.L. van de Watering, The Impact of a Genius: Rembrandt, his Pupils and Followers in the Seventeenth Century: Paintings from Museums and Private Collections (exh. cat. Waterman Gallery, 1983; Groninger Museum, Summer 1983), Amsterdam 1983
1988

B.L. Brown and A.K. Wheelock, Masterworks from Munich. Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Paintings from the Alte Pinakothek (exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 29 May - 5 September 1988; Cincinnati Art Museum, 25 October - 8 January 1989), Washington 1988
1988

J. Giltaij and G. Jansen, A Glowing Palette: Paintings of Rembrandt and his School, (exh. cat. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 6 November 1988 - 15 January 1989), Rotterdam 1988
1990

H.P. Chapman, Rembrandt's Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity, Princeton 1990
1991

Maclaren, Neil, revised by Christopher Brown, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1600-1900, 2nd edn (revised and expanded), 2 vols, London 1991
1992

R. Trnek, Die hollandischen Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts, Vienna 1992
1996

W. Sumowski, 'Ein Gemälde bon Carel Fabritius', Pantheon, LIV, 1996, pp. 77-84
1997

A. Blankert, Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact (exh. cat. National Gallery of Victoria, 1 October - 7 December 1997; National Gallery of Australia, 17 December 1997 - 15 February 1998), Melbourne 1997
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

R. Baarsen et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, New Haven 2001
2004

F. Duparc et al., Carel Fabritius, 1622-1654 (exh. cat. Mauritshuis, 24 September 2004 - 9 January 2005; Staatliches Museum Schwerin, 28 January - 16 May 2005), Zwolle 2004

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

More works by Carel Fabritius

A View of Delft