A large, glossy, black-and-white profile portrait of Rubinstein at the piano. The rather striking image, which is unknown to us and seems to have been taken at his home, shows an older Rubinstein looking at a score on the music desk while his hands hover above the keyboard. On his right and left sit a glasses case and a stack of music, while atop the lid there are a lamp and three glass ducks.

Rubinstein's musicality was the stuff of legend: he could play most of his vast repertoire from memory, recall entire symphonies at the keyboard, and even learn works without the benefit of a piano. In his memoirs, he recalled learning Franck's Symphonic Variations on a train, simply by practicing the solo piano part in his lap.

Rubinstein withdrew from public performance in 1934, stating that he had relied on his natural talent at the expense of his technique for too long, and entered into a three-year period of intense technical study. He reemerged in 1937 with a tour of the United States and remained an active performer thereafter.