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Additional notes:
This master print also has Amand Durand's stamp on the reverse which can be referenced by Lugt. 2934. Most of the original Durand prints from the 1800's do not have the Lugt stamp on the reverse which makes this a rarity.
Extra Information:
This is one of the most interesting historical portraits in England, and probably one of the most faithful. Rembrandt was never a flatterer ; he did not care enough for beauty or grace to think them necessary to his pictures, but he did care for a certain kind of truth, especially truth of character. There is at least a difference equally wide between princely portraiture of this simple kind and the bedizened princes of the grand sizlcle in France, when all great personages, however youthful, were made to look prodigious in robes, and ribbons, and wigs, and lace, and pride. The face of young William is presented here just in its natural plainness, and the boy gives himself no airs of any kind, but looks straight before him, fearlessly and without affectation, just as in after-life he could look defeat itself in the face to see whether anything could be made of it. The aspect is not that of a robust boyhood, and we know that this boy was delicate. What is on the boy's left shoulder (to the spectator's right) we do not pretend to know, but Rembrandt seems to have intended it for some arrangement of drapery. There is nothing visible in the background except darkness. Almost the whole attention of the piece appears to have been concentrated on the face. 
‘The fall of De Witt raised the Orange party again to power, and called the Prince of Orange to the head of the Republic. Though the young Stadtholder had hardly reached manhood, his great qualities at once made themselves felt. His earlier life had schooled him in a wonderful self-control. He had been left fatherless and all but friendless in childhood; he had been bred among men who looked on his very existence as a danger to the State; his words had been watched, his looks noted, his friends jealously withdrawn. In such an atmosphere the boy grew up silent, wary, self-contained, grave in temper, cold in demeanor, blunt and even repulsive in address. He was weak and sickly from his cradle, and manhood brought with it an asthma and consumption which shook his frame with a constant cough; his face was sullen and bloodless, and scored with deep lines which told of ceaseless pain. But beneath this cold and sickly presence lay a fiery and commanding temper, an immovable courage, and a political ability of the highest order. William was a born statesman. Neglected as his education had been in other ways, for he knew nothing of letters or of art, he had been carefully trained in politics by John de Witt.’ Only a few years after this portrait was taken William of Orange was not only recognized as a statesman, but also, whilst still in his youth, gave proof of both courage and skill as a general. The portrait has therefore an interest which would not have belonged to it if his powers had not developed themselves early. No Englishman can look without respect on this young brow, so soon to be burdened with the‘ cares of state, or on these childish lips, which were ~ Mr. Green's ‘ History of the English People,’ 

Artist Biography:
  Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch Baroque painter and printmaker, one of the greatest storytellers in the history of art, possessing an exceptional ability to render people in their various moods and dramatic guises. Rembrandt is also known as a painter of light and shade and as an artist who favored an uncompromising realism that would lead some critics to claim that he preferred ugliness to beauty.

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