'Discovered need and loss'

In 'Portrait Painter' (collected in The Covenant), Dick Davis writes a formal poem (a single sentence of three six-line stanzas rhymed abcbac) that is a kind of defence of formalism, telling how the artist, detaching himself emotionally and concentrating on form and technique, can bring forth the essence, 'unbidden, true', of a subject – and its emotional power, unsought but blazing through...  

Portrait Painter

If, in the middle-aged
Worn face now given to
His stranger's scrutiny
He sees – unbidden, true – 
Regret stare unassuaged
From posed formality – 

Her need and loss, a life
Of compromise made plain,
His thoughts are not the rush
Of sympathy for pain
But tone and palette-knife,
The texture of this brush:

And, glancing up, his gaze
Meets nothing of the heart 
But colour, shade, and gloss –
The problems of his art;
While from the canvas blaze
Discovered need and loss.

I wonder if Davis had Rembrandt in mind when he wrote this – the Rembrandt who painted portraits such as the one above, of Aechje Claesdr. I've written about two Rembrandt poems by Davis before – here and here. Perhaps this is a third?