The painting shows a laughing man, bareheaded, with his head tilted back, dressed in a deep purple robe, surrounded by a rougher brown woolen cape.

[1] His hair is long, "fluffy", light and dark blond, as in other Rembrandt portraits of the period (e.g. Self-Portrait in a Gorget in Nuremberg).

Still, the painting was previously known from the late 18th, or, more probably, early 19th century print by Flemish engraver Lambertus Antonius Claessens, who reproduced it as a work by Franz Hals.

[2] In the 18th or 19th century it was owned by a French collector who wrote an inscription on its back: "Democrite Philosophe [?]

The reason was that although photos of the painting had been emailed to the experts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam before the sale, "their response was pretty dismissive", as auctioneer Philip Allwood has said.

To that end Ernst van de Wetering, professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam and Chair of the Rembrandt Research Project undertook extensive research, and published his results in the "Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis" in 2007.

His conclusion that the painting offered at the auction in Gloucestershire is a genuine Rembrandt was argued through a variety of evidence.

[7] Still, the problem was that Rembrandt sometimes signed his pupils' paintings, as a kind of guarantee that they had come from his studio.