The Polish Rider is a 1655 painting…

The Polish Rider is a 1655 painting of a man traveling on horseback through a murky landscape, now in the Frick Collection in New York.

When the painting was bought by Henry Frick in 1910, there was consensus that the work was by seventeenth-century Dutch painter Rembrandt.

However, this attribution has since been contested.

There has also been debate over whether the painting was intended as a portrait of a particular person, living or historical, and if so of whom, or if not, what it was intended to represent.

The quality of the painting is generally agreed as is its slight air of mystery.

Parts of the background are very sketchily painted or unfinished.

Josua Bruyn, a member of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) in 1984, suggested that characteristics of the work of Willem Drost, a student of Rembrandt, could be observed in the painting.

The Polish Rider is unlike Rembrandt's other work in several ways.

In particular, Rembrandt rarely worked on equestrian paintings, the only other known portrait of a horseback rider in Rembrandt's work being that of Frederick Rihel.

A 1998 study published by the RRP concluded that another artist's hand, besides that of Rembrandt, was involved in the work.

Rembrandt started the painting in 1655; however, he left it unfinished and it was probably completed by someone else.