Portrait of a Man, Holding a White Plume

In 1637, at the age of twenty, Bol left Dordrecht for Amsterdam to work in the studio of Rembrandt whose influence would dominate the artist’s work for the rest of his career. Here, Bol shows the sitter half-length, his torso and face turned toward the viewer and his right arm reaching across the foreground, holding an extravagant ostrich feather, as though it were a brush.