Professor Butter Beard and Rembrandt’s “Portrait of Jan Six”
“The wildlings seemed to think Ygritte a great beauty because of her hair; red hair was rare among the free folk, and those who had it were said to be kissed by fire, which was supposed to be lucky.” - George R. R. Martin
Kissed by fire. Well, that certainly explains it! My “gingerness” has been a defining part of me for over six decades now and since I have made the current determination to grow out the long curls again, it’s refreshing to see the fire is determined to stay lit (although slightly hidden within the other smokey white ringlets).
Throughout history, artists from Botticelli to Rossetti have mined the potent symbolism of red hair to alternately suggest promiscuity, sensuality, deviousness, and, above all, otherness for centuries. “This business of being attracted to the color red is very hardwired into us,” according to Jacky Colliss Harvey, author of “Red: A History of the Redhead.” Early humans developed the ability to differentiate between reds, greens, and blues as an evolutionary mechanism to help them (among other things) better forage for ripe, brightly colored fruits in overwhelmingly green forests. “And that’s even before all of the associations with fire, and warmth, and sun, and blood,” Harvey continued.
But this week, while writing my Impressionism lecture and visiting with the vibrant “gingers” painted by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, my mind always seemed to sideswipe back to another of my favorite depictions of a curiously tantalizing redhead.
When Rembrandt van Rijn needed money in 1653 to pay his creditors, his friend the art collector (and “ginger”) Jan Six was one of those who lent it to him, providing 1000 guilders. The loan was interest free. But Rembrandt’s portrait of his younger friend, painted a year later in 1654, repaid the obligation with a masterpiece, considered by many to be the greatest portrait of the seventeenth century.
The painting is life-size, but Rembrandt chose to portray the 36-year-old man of the world in a three-quarter length. Standing before the painting we see the man fully face-to-face, so close that we can see the small cleft in his chin and the fastidiously exposed measure of pink skin between his mustache and upper lip. Jan Six is looking at the viewer rather enquiringly, his head slightly on one side, without posing or vanity, but beautifully captured by the artist portraying the exact justified hesitation of someone encountering a stranger.
We meet him as he is about to go into the world, stepping forward out of the darkly painted background into the light of day. He has just placed his large black felt hat on his long fair reddish hair, and with the right hand, which holds one glove, he draws the other glove on to his left hand. We follow Rembrandt’s choice of colors moving diagonally from the dark pigeon-gray of the coat through the ocher of his chamois gloves and finally toward the dazzling saturated scarlet of his cloak. The glimmering gold embroidery on the cloak is just a series of quick strokes of paint, done with a broad brush, whereas the right hand is strikingly rendered where even the tension in the hand necessary to draw on the glove is made fully visible.
If Rembrandt had painted this portrait earlier in the 1630’s, he would have sculpted his sitter’s hair with almost pedantic care, scratching in the individual strands with the back of his brush handle. Here, he manages to suggest Jan Six’s full reddish mane with cloudy, almost airy brushwork, dabbed in except for the stray locks playfully overhanging the white collar, where he indicates the hair ends by a web of minutely hatched vertical lines.
Yes, I gush. But that is all a groovy aspect of my passionate “gingerness.” In an attempt to move all this ginger energy forward, I stepped away from my daydreams and created a variation of Mary Berry’s famous ginger biscuits to enliven a weekly department meeting. They deliciously snap with crystallized ginger, ground ginger, dark brown sugar and a dash of maple syrup. And, I must admit, watching the electric expression on faces as they experience their first crisp bite is priceless. Like a lucky kiss of fire.
Snappy Ginger Biscuits
Adapted from a recipe by Mary Berry
Two dozen large cookies
4 ounces unsalted butter (one stick)
2 Tbsp pure maple syrup
12 ounces all-purpose flour (do yourself a favor and purchase a baking scale)
2 Tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp fine sea salt
8 ounces dark brown sugar
6 ounces crystallized ginger, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs
Coarse or sprinkling sugar for the tops of the cookies (pre-bake)
1) Preheat your oven to 320 degrees and place the rack in the center of the oven.
2) Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
3) In a small saucepan, melt the butter and the maple syrup together. Remove from the heat, stir to combine and set aside to slightly cool.
4) In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, ground ginger, baking soda, sea salt and dark brown sugar until no lumps of brown sugar remain. Set aside.
5) Coarsely chop the crystallized ginger and add to the dry mixture.
6) Stir the maple butter into the dry mix and then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing until it all comes together as a dough.
7) Divide the dough into three mounds and cut each mound equally into eight triangles.
8) Roll the triangles into a ball in your hands and dip them into the coarse (or sprinkling) sugar. Place eight cookie balls, well-spaced, on each of the three trays and then flatten them into a ½” circle. I use a measuring cup to press down the raw cookies.
9) Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for roughly 20 minutes, until golden and firm around the edges. Let them cool on the sheet for five minutes and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.
