What is your favorite painting — and why?

Painted around 1655 by Rembrandt van Rijn, The Polish Rider depicts a young man traveling on horseback through a murky landscape. The rider, dressed in exotic Eastern European costume with a fur hat and coat trimmed with gold, carries weapons—a bow, arrows, a quiver, and what appears to be an axe or hammer. He rides a white horse through a desolate terrain, with a large building looming in the distance and small figures gathered near a fire on the right.

Art historian Kenneth Clark called it "one of the great poems of the world." The Frick Collection's chief curator Xavier Salomon describes it as "one of those paintings that encapsulate the human experience in a single image." But despite centuries of scholarship, fundamental questions remain unanswered: Who commissioned it? Who is the rider? What does it represent? Is it a portrait or an allegorical work?

The painting has been at The Frick Collection since the museum opened to the public in December 1935, hanging in the intimate galleries where Henry Clay Frick intended his art to be seen—not in vast museum halls, but in rooms scaled to human experience. Nancy could walk to the Frick, stand before this painting, and contemplate its mysteries herself.

The painting has been known as The Polish Rider since the late 19th century, but its Polish connections began in 1791 when Polish aristocrat Michał Kazimierz Ogiński offered it to King Stanisław August Poniatowski. In a letter, Ogiński wrote with characteristic humor: "I am sending Your Majesty a Cossack that Rembrandt has sat on a horse, which horse has, in his time with me, eaten me out of 420 German guldens...." The payment? Valuable orange trees from the royal gardens at Łazienki Palace.

The king, a great admirer of Rembrandt, hung the painting in the Hall on the first floor of the Palace on the Isle at Łazienki, his beloved summer residence in Warsaw. At the time, he owned eleven paintings attributed to Rembrandt, though only three were genuine. After the king abdicated in 1795 and left Poland, the painting remained at Łazienki but eventually passed through several Polish noble families: the Tyszkiewicz, Drucki-Lubecki, and Stroynowski families.

In the Stroynowski family, the painting became a cherished family portrait. They saw in the rider a resemblance to Stanisław Stroynowski, commander of a legendary Polish irregular cavalry regiment known as the Lisowczycy. This romantic legend persisted: by the 1898 Amsterdam exhibition, the painting was titled "The Polish Rider."

In 1910, Count Zdzisław Tarnowski of Dzików, the last Polish owner, decided to sell the painting. His decision was both practical and patriotic: he needed funds to buy back Polish land that had belonged to his family. The buyer was Henry Clay Frick, the Pittsburgh steel magnate, who paid a substantial sum for what had by then become a famous Rembrandt.

Frick hung The Polish Rider in his Fifth Avenue mansion alongside masterpieces by Bellini, Vermeer, Goya, and Fragonard. After Frick's death in 1919 and his wife Adelaide's death in 1931, the house became a museum. The painting has occupied the same place of honor in the Frick's galleries ever since—a testament to both Frick's connoisseurship and the painting's enduring power.

The Lisowczyk Theory: One persistent theory identifies the rider as a member of the Lisowczycy (pronounced "Lee-sof-CHI-tsi"), Polish irregular light cavalry who terrorized Eastern Europe in the early 17th century. These skilled horsemen—capable of shooting arrows from galloping horses while dangling from stirrups—earned the nickname "Riders of the Apocalypse" for their fearsome reputation in battle and pillaging.

Other Candidates: Scholars have proposed the rider might be Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński (an ancestor of the painting's 18th-century owner), Rembrandt's son Titus, a biblical figure, or a fictional character representing the concept of a Christian knight or miles christianus (soldier of Christ).

The Costume Question: The rider's costume is "authentic fantasy from the Rembrandt costume department," as art critic Waldemar Januszczak describes it. It's sort of Polish, sort of Hungarian, with some Cossack elements—reflecting how the 17th-century European imagination envisioned exotic Eastern horsemen from the lands that had sent the Huns, Mongols, and Tartars.

Perhaps the mystery is the point. The idealized, inscrutable character invites us to project our own interpretations, to see in this solitary rider whatever resonates with our own experience: a warrior, a pilgrim, a wanderer, an embodiment of courage or melancholy or determination.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) is considered one of the greatest visual artists in Western art history. Born in Leiden, the son of a miller, he showed such talent that his prosperous family sent him to Latin School and briefly to Leiden University. But art called to him more strongly than academics.

After studying with local master Jacob van Swanenburch and the renowned history painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt opened his own studio in Leiden at age 18 or 19. By his mid-twenties, he was so accomplished that he began signing his work with just his first name—like Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo before him.

Rembrandt's life was marked by extraordinary artistic success and profound personal tragedy. He married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634 and moved into a grand house in Amsterdam. Between 1635 and 1641, Saskia gave birth to four children; only the last, Titus, survived. Saskia herself died in 1642 at age 30. His common-law wife Hendrickje Stoffels died in 1663, and Titus died in 1668 at just 27.

Despite personal sorrows and financial troubles that led to bankruptcy in 1656, Rembrandt's artistry only deepened. He created approximately 300 paintings, 300 etchings, and several hundred drawings. His mastery of light and shadow, his psychological depth in portraiture, and his approximately 40 self-portraits form an intimate autobiography unmatched in art history. He died on October 4, 1669, in Amsterdam, still painting until the end.

Throughout most of the 20th century, there was consensus that The Polish Rider was indeed by Rembrandt. However, in 1984, the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP)—an art historical initiative that rigorously examined all paintings attributed to Rembrandt—tentatively suggested that characteristics of Willem Drost, one of Rembrandt's students, could be observed in the painting.

The doubters noted that the painting is unusual for Rembrandt: it's one of only two equestrian portraits he ever painted (the other being the Portrait of Frederick Rihel, 1663). Some felt the execution was uneven, suggesting multiple hands at work. A 1998 RRP study concluded another artist besides Rembrandt may have been involved, perhaps completing a work Rembrandt left unfinished in the 1650s.

However, this remained a minority opinion. More recent scholarship has shifted decisively in favor of Rembrandt's authorship. Art historian Simon Schama in his 1999 book Rembrandt's Eyes and scholar Ernst van de Wetering, chair of the Rembrandt Project, both argued strongly for attribution to the master. The Frick Collection never changed its attribution, and current consensus holds that this is authentically Rembrandt—painted around 1655, right in the middle of his mature "golden patch" when masterpiece after masterpiece poured from his brush.