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In 1968 the ] (RRP) was started under the sponsorship of the ] (NWO). Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete critical catalog of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been taken from the list. Many of those are now thought to be the work of his students. In 1968 the ] (RRP) was started under the sponsorship of the ] (NWO). Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete critical catalog of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been taken from the list. Many of those are now thought to be the work of his students.


One example of activity is ''The Polish Rider'', one of the treasures of New York's ]. Its authenticity had been questioned years before by several scholars, led by ]. Many, including Dr. ] of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, ], about who little is known. The Frick Museum itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted in favor of the Frick, with ] in his 1999 book 'Rembrandt's Eyes', and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van der Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master. One example of activity is ''The Polish Rider'', one of the treasures of New York's ]. Its authenticity had been questioned years before by several scholars, led by ]. Many, including Dr. ] of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, ], about who little is known. The Frick Museum itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted in favor of the Frick, with ] in his 1999 book 'Rembrandt's Eyes', and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master.


Another one of his painting "Pilate Washing His Hands", is concidered probably 1660s Another one of his painting "Pilate Washing His Hands", is concidered probably 1660s

Revision as of 22:00, 29 April 2006

Rembrandt
This article is about the Dutch painter. For other uses of the term, see Rembrandt (disambiguation).

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) is generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.

Rembrandt was also a proficient printmaker and made many drawings. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age (roughly equivalent to the seventeenth century), in which Dutch culture, science, commerce, world power and political influence reached their pinnacles.

"No artist ever combined more delicate skill with more energy and power," states Chambers's Biographical Dictionary. "His treatment of mankind is full of human sympathy" (J.O. Thorne: 1962).

Works

There is only one known phrase by Rembrandt about what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from die meeste ende di naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt. This was found in a letter written to a patron. Whether he meant movement of the objects in his paintings or of the viewer's emotions or both is still unclear and subject to debate among art historians.

In all, Rembrandt produced around 600 paintings, 300 etchings, and 2,000 drawings. He was a prolific painter of self-portraits, producing almost a hundred of them (including some 20 etchings) throughout his long career. Together they give us a remarkably clear picture of the man, his looks, and — more importantly — his emotions, as misfortune and sorrow etched wrinkles in his face.

Among the prominent characteristics of his work are his use of chiaroscuro, often using stark contrasts, thus drawing the viewer into the painting; his dramatic and lively scenes, devoid of any rigid formality that contemporary artists often displayed; and his ostensibly deeply felt compassion for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age.

His immediate family — his wife Saskia, his son Titus, and his common-law wife Hendrickje — often figured prominently in his paintings, many of which had mythical, biblical, or historical themes.

Life

Rembrandt was born on July 15 1606 in Leiden, the Netherlands. Conflicting sources state that his family either had 7, 9 or 10 children. His family was quite well to do; his father being a miller, his mother a baker's daughter. As a boy he attended Latin school and was enrolled at the University of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had more inclination towards painting. His parents gave in and he was apprenticed with a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh. After a brief but important apprenticeship with the famous painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt opened a studio in Leiden, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerard Dou.

Rembrandt was discovered by statesman and poet, Constantijn Huygens, the father of Christiaan Huygens.

By 1631, Rembrandt had established such a good reputation that he received several assignments for portraits from Amsterdam. As a result, he moved to that city and into the house of an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. This move eventually led, in 1634, to the marriage of Rembrandt and Hendrick's greatniece, Saskia van Uylenburg. This was obviously a marriage of love. Although she came from a good family (her father had been burgemeester (mayor) of Leeuwarden), Saskia was an orphan and was probably not very wealthy. She lived with her sister in Frisia and did not have many "grand" connections in Amsterdam. These events, however, are widely disputed.

In 1639, Rembrandt and Saskia moved to a prominent house in the Jodenbreestraat in the Jewish quarter, which later became the Rembrandt House Museum. Although they were affluent the couple had several setbacks in their personal life. Three of their children died shortly after birth. Only their fourth child, a son, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642 soon after Titus's birth, probably from tuberculosis.

After her death he began an affair with Titus's nurse, a widow called Geertje Dircx. The relationship did not go well, however, and ended in a lawsuit. Geertje claimed that Rembrandt had broken his promise to marry her, and demanded that the council force him to marry her. The council did not go that far but Rembrandt was asked to pay her a large sum of money. He then cooperated with Geertje's family to have her locked up in a spinhuis (house of correction) in Gouda.

In the late 1640s, she was succeeded as Rembrandt's mistress by the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who initially had also been Rembrandt's maidservant. In 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje an official reproach from the Reformed church for "living in sin." Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council because he was not a member of the Reformed church.

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying many art pieces and especially prints (often used in his paintings), and rarities, which probably caused his bankruptcy in 1656. He had to sell his house and move to a more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht. Here, Hendrickje and Titus started an art shop to make ends meet. However, Rembrandt's fame did not wane in these years, since he received an important commission for a large history piece for the newly built city hall.

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje and Titus. In the end, only his daughter Cornelia was at his side. The bereaving death of his much beloved son took heavy toll on Rembrandt and soon after that he died October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk.

Periods, themes, and styles

  • It was during Rembrandt's Leiden period (1625-1631) that Lastman's influence was most prominent. Paintings were rather small, but rich in details (for example, in costumes and jewelry). Themes were mostly religious and allegoric.
  • During his early years in Amsterdam (1632-1636), Rembrandt used large canvases and strong tones and depicted dramatic scenes. Rembrandt painted many portraits in this period. Other paintings had biblical and mythological scenes.
  • In the late 1630, Rembrandt painted many landscapes and produced etchings about nature. In this period, his landscapes were tormented by nature, showing trees taken down by a storm or ominous skies with dark clouds.
  • Starting in about 1640, his work became more sober, reflecting the family tragedies that he had suffered. Exuberance was replaced by deeply felt inner emotions. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament instead of the Old Testament, as had been the case before. Paintings became smaller again. An exception is the huge painting The Night Watch, his largest, which was as worldly and spirited as any previous painting. Landscapes were more often etched than painted. The dark forces of nature made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.
  • In the 1650s, Rembrandt's style changed again. Paintings increased in size. Colours became richer, brush strokes stronger. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined towards fine, detailed works. Over the years, biblical themes were still depicted often, but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures.
  • In his last years, Rembrandt painted some of his finest self-portraits, showing a face on which grief and sorrow had left their marks.

Museum collections

  • In the Netherlands, the most notable collection of Rembrandt's work is at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, including De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch) and De Joodse bruid (The Jewish Bride).
  • His home, preserved as the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, houses many examples of his engravings.

A selection of famous works

The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Night Watch

Main article: Night Watch (painting)
File:RembrandtNightwatch.jpg
The Night Watch or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642, Oil on Canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq between 1640 and 1642. This picture was called the Patrouille de Nuit by the French and the Night Watch by Sir Joshua Reynolds because, upon its discovery, the picture was so dimmed and defaced by time that it was almost indistinguishable and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day — a party of musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight.

The piece was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. Rembrandt departed from convention, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal, rather a line-up than an action scene. Instead he showed the militia readying themselves to embark on a mission (what kind of mission, an ordinary patrol or some special event, is a matter of debate). His new approach caused a row, especially among the militia members who ended up at the back of the scene and were hardly visible. Payment was delayed. Parts of the canvas were cut off to make the painting fit on the designated wall when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall in 1715.

This painting now hangs in the largest hall of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is a large painting that takes up the entire back wall — despite having had bits cut off — and is arguably one of the most impressive paintings displayed there.

Expert assessments

In 1968 the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) was started under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research (NWO). Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete critical catalog of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been taken from the list. Many of those are now thought to be the work of his students.

One example of activity is The Polish Rider, one of the treasures of New York's Frick Collection. Its authenticity had been questioned years before by several scholars, led by Julius Held. Many, including Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about who little is known. The Frick Museum itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted in favor of the Frick, with Simon Schams in his 1999 book 'Rembrandt's Eyes', and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master.

Another one of his painting "Pilate Washing His Hands", is concidered probably 1660s Style of Rembrandt (Dutch, 17th century) Oil on canvas; 51 1/4 x 65 3/4 in. (130.2 x 167 cm) Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913 (14.40.610)

Critical opinions of this picture have varied considerably since about 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as "a somewhat abnormal work" by Rembrandt. However, most scholars since the 1940s have dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil. The composition is reminiscent of mature works by Rembrandt but the Rembrandtesque surface effects fail to convey anything like the master's command of illumination and modeling. The name of his only known pupil of the 1660s, Arent de Gelder, has been put forward speculatively.

Vanrijngo's (Bob Miller) critical opinion is exactly this after assigning it back to Rembrandt;

This painting of Rembrandt's "Pilate Washing His Hands", is one of Rembrandt's best paintings as far as I'm concerned, no matter how muddy they say it looks. That is the best part of this painting, that so-called chain and its hidden meanings, telling us the truth that Rembrandt was conveying to his viewers. That so-called thrown on paint, supposedly a chain around that minister of the Lord's neck, happens to be the jawbone of a dead lying ass... and low and behold, he happens to be in a house of prostitution, and I'd say this premise pretty well sums it up for me. "I'll have one more drink, sir, before taking this young beauty and her blanket and wash pan back to her cubical." It appears the proprietor of this house is leaning through the open French door filling up his glass while the soldiers and guards are keeping other customers away while being a little surprised at where they see the clerics are. Rembrandt didn't have to worry about those blind donkey-ear MFA experts seeing what he had painted.

The attribution and re-attribution work remains ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640.

Rembrandt's own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, as he encouraged his students to copy his own work, sometimes with enough retouching so he could sell them as originals, and sometimes simply to sell as authorized copies. Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate. Further complicating matters is the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt's own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments. It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.

A medical analysis of Rembrandt's art talent

In an article published on September 16, 2004 in The New England Journal of Medicine, Margaret S. Livingstone, professor of neurobiology of Harvard Medical School, suggests that Rembrandt, whose eyes failed to align correctly, suffered from stereo blindness. She made this conclusion after studying 36 of Rembrandt's self-portraits.

Because he could not form a normal binocular vision, his brain automatically switched to one eye for many visual tasks. This disability could have helped him to flatten images as he saw, and then put it onto the two-dimensional canvas. In the author's words, this could have been a gift to a great painter like him:

Art teachers often instruct students to close one eye in order to flatten what they see. Therefore, stereo blindness might not be a handicap — and might even be an asset — for some artists.

Citations

  1. (Hughes 2006, p. 6) harv error: no target: CITEREFHughes2006 (help).

References

See also

External links

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