The half-length figure of an old man is depicted against a dark background. He looks at the viewer out of the corner of his eye, with his torso turned slightly to the left and his head to the right, as he holds a candle in his right hand to light up a manuscript in his left, of which we can only see the back. Old Man reading by Candlelight is clearly a night scene, a genre in which Schalcken specialised from the outset. It draws on the compositions with one or more characters shown reading, writing or studying by candle - or lamplight first produced by Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) in Leiden, with a view to studying the reflection of artificial light on different kinds of surfaces.

As in his portraits, Schalcken here seems to focus on the flame reflected in the pupil of the old man. In this respect, the composition is very close, for instance, to Portrait of King William III, dated 1669 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), although, to judge from the technical and stylistic execution, the Prado painting is from a later date. Indeed, the pictorial treatment would suggest that Old Man reading by Candlelight dates from the artist`s final phase, when, perhaps influenced by Caspar Netscher (1639-1684) or Frans van Mieris (1635-1681), he substituted the intricate and complex technique employed by his master, Gerrit Dou, for a freer, more flowing style with greater subtlety of light contrast.

Although it is difficult to identify the character, the model is the same one used in Saint Peter, a picture with considerable similarities to this in terms of technique, composition, colour and lighting. Behermann dates both pictures between 1700 and 1706 and suggests that they may have been part of the same series, perhaps an Apostolate (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, pp. 128-129).