Painting considered workshop copy is in fact by Rembrandt, expert says

The privately owned version from the UK (left) and the undisputed version from the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection. Photograph: Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A portrait in a UK collection that has long been dismissed as a workshop copy of an almost identical painting by Rembrandt was in fact also painted by the 17th-century Dutch master, according to a leading scholar.

Each of the paintings, titled Old Man with a Gold Chain and dated to the early 1630s, is a near-lifesize depiction of an older man wearing a gold chain and a plumed hat.