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Revision as of 14:36, 15 June 2007 by Ilse@ (talk | contribs) (remove explanation about Dutch Golden Age (reason: should be in Dutch Golden Age article))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This article is about the Dutch artist. For other uses, see Rembrandt (disambiguation).
Rembrandt van Rijn
File:Rembrandt van rijn-self portrait.jpgSelf portrait by Rembrandt, detail (1661).
BornRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
NationalityDutch
Known forPainting, Printmaking

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.

"He combined more delicate skill with more energy and power," states Chambers' Biographical Dictionary. "His treatment of mankind is full of human sympathy" (J.O. Thorne: 1962).

Works

File:Rembrandt Christ In The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee.jpg
Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee, 1633. Oil on canvas.

In a letter to a patron, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from die meeste ende di naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt. The word "beweechgelickhijt" is also argued to mean "emotion" or "motive". Whether this refers to objectives material or otherwise is open to interpretation; either way, Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual as has no other painter in Western art.

Earlier 20th century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced over 600 paintings, nearly 400 etchings, and 2,000 drawings. More recent scholarship, from the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often controversially, have winnowed his oeuvre to 300 paintings. It is likely he made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000, but those extant are more rare than presumed. 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 appearance, and — more importantly — his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly-weathered face.

Among the prominent characteristics of his work are his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio but adapted for very personal means; his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid formality that his contemporaries often displayed; and a 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's wife Saskia (1636), painted by Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15 1606 (traditionally) but more probably in 1607 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 was a miller, his mother was 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 a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to 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 Gerrit Dou.

In 1629 Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman and poet Constantijn Huygens, the father of Christiaan Huygens (a famous Dutch mathematician and physicist), who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of the Hague. As a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.

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 Uylenburg. This move eventually led, in 1634, to the marriage of Rembrandt and Hendrick's cousin, Saskia van Uylenburg. This was likely both a marriage of love and a shrewd business choice. Saskia came from a good family (her father had been lawyer and burgemeester (mayor) of Leeuwarden). When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, she lived with an older sister in Het Bildt. They were married in the local church, without the presence of his relatives.

Rembrandt's house in Amsterdam, now the Rembrandt House Museum

In 1639, Rembrandt and Saskia moved to a prominent house in the Jodenbreestraat in the Jewish quarter, which later became the Rembrandt House Museum. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbours to model for his Old Testament scenes. Although they were by now affluent the couple suffered several personal setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635, and their daughter Cornelia died at just 3 weeks of age in 1638. Only their third child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642 soon after Titus's birth, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt's drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.

Rembrandt's son Titus (ca. 1645), painted by Rembrandt

During Saskia's illness, one Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus' caretaker and nurse, and possibly also became Rembrandt's lover. She would later charge Rembrandt with breach of promise. Rembrandt worked to have her committed to an asylum.

In the late 1640s Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been Rembrandt's maidservant. In 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje an official reproach from the Reformed church for "living in sin." The two were considered legally wed under common law, but Rembrandt had not married Henrickje, so as not to lose access to a trust set up for Titus in his mother's will. Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council because he was not a member of the Reformed church. However, a number of the church Elders were among those to whom Rembrandt owed money, and sought to apply pressure indirectly. To her credit, Stoffels did not leave Rembrandt, and later helped save him and his art.

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own work), prints (often used in his paintings), and rarities, which probably caused his bankruptcy in 1656. His insolvency led to an auction of most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities. He also had to sell his house, and his printing-press, and move to a more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht. Here, Hendrickje set up a corporation with Titus, employing Rembrandt and thereby sheltering him from creditors. In 1661 he was contracted to complete work for the newly built city hall, but only after the artist who had been previously commissioned died before completing his own work.

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje and Titus. Rembrandt died soon after his son, on October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Westerkerk.

Periods, themes, and styles

The Abduction of Europa, 1632. Oil on panel. The work is considered to be "...a shining example of the 'golden age' of baroque painting."

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 allegorical. During his early years in Amsterdam (1632-1636), Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format. He also began accepting portrait commissions.

In the late 1630s, Rembrandt produced a few paintings and many etchings of landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring uprooted trees and ominous skies. From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in tone, reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case before. Paintings became smaller again. An exception is the huge The Night Watch, his largest work, 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 more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward 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 his most deeply reflective self-portraits, and several moving images of both men and women--- in love, in life, and before God.

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 etchings.

Selected works

Young Woman in Bed, 1647. Oil on canvas.
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Oil on canvas.

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

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; on display at the 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). Contrary to years of speculation, the work was hailed as a success from the beginning. 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. The painting now hangs in the largest hall of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it occupies the entire rear wall (as of February 2007, the museum remains closed for renovations, but the Rembrandts are being shown in a nearby adjacent part of the building).

Expert assessments

The Polish Rider - A Lisowczyk on horseback. The subject of much discussion.

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, in 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 whom 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 Schama 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. Many scholars feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.

Another painting, Pilate Washing His Hands, is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion 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.

The Hundred Guilder Print, c.1647-1649, etching.

The attribution and re-attribution work is 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, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them 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 does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.

Signature

"Rembrandt" is a modification of the spelling of the artist's first name, which he introduced in 1633. Roughly speaking, his earliest signatures (ca. 1625) consisted of an initial "R", or the monogram "RH" (for Rembrant Harmenszoon), and starting in 1629, "RHL" (the "L" stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632 he added his patronymic to this monogram, "RHL-van Rijn", then began using his first name alone, "Rembrant". In 1633 he added a "d", and maintained this form from then on.

Optical theory

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 he saw, and then put it onto the two-dimensional canvas. In Livingstone'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." However, among Rembrandt's greatest talents was an ability to create the illusion of full volume, the perception of which requires healthy stereoptic vision.

Works

See also

References

Self Portrait, 1658. Oil on canvas.
  • Adams, Laurie Schneider (1999). Art Across Time. Volume II. McGraw-Hill College, New York, NY.
  • Clough, Shepard B. (1975). European History in a World Perspective. D.C. Heath and Company, Los Lexington, MA. ISBN 0-669-85555-3.
  • Graaff, Arthur E.A.J. and Michiel V. Roscam Abbing (2006). Rembrandt for Dummies. Addison Wesley. ISBN 90-430-1280.
  • Template:Harvard reference
  • Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Ed., 2005): A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings - Volume IV. Ernst van de Wetering, Karin Groen et al. Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (NL). ISBN 1-4020-3280-3. p. 692. (Self-Portraits)
    • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings - Volume I, which deals with works from Rembrandt’s early years in Leiden(1629-1631), 1982
    • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings - Volume II: 1631-1634. Bruyn, J., Haak, B. (et al.), Band 2, 1986, ISBN 978-90-247-3339-2
    • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings - Volume III, 1635-1642. Bruyn, J., Haak, B., Levie, S.H., van Thiel, P.J.J., van de Wetering, E. (Ed. Hrsg.), Band 3, 1990, ISBN 978-90-247-3781-9
    • Rembrandt. Images and metaphors (book) (Christian Tumpel)-

Editor, Haus Books London 2006 ISBN 13: 978-1-904950-92-9

  • Rembrandt by himself (Christopher White - Editor, Quentin Buvelot - Editor) National Gallery Co Ltd

Footnotes

  1. Hughes, p. 6
  2. Adams, p. 660
  3. Clough, p. 23

External links


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