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February 2015

Vol. 157 / No. 1343

Late Rembrandt

Reviewed by Richard Verdi

London and Amsterdam

by RICHARD VERDI

Rembrandt’s late works are justly regarded as one of the summits of Western art, and the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to them – first shown at the National Gallery, London (closed 18th January), and soon to be transferred and enlarged at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (12th February to 17th May) – does not disappoint. Included in it are more than ninety paintings, drawings and etchings spanning the last two decades of the artist’s career with a predictably generous selection of works from the two host museums and spectacular loans from Stockholm, Washington, Kassel and Braunschweig, although (alas) none from Russia, nor any paintings from New York. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalogue consisting of ­fourteen essays of variable distinction but no catalogue entries.1 As a work of reference and scholarship this pales beside the monumental volumes that accompanied the great Rembrandt exhibition mounted by these same museums with Berlin in 1991–92, which are still indispensable. Instead, what we are offered now is a substantial souvenir of a truly remarkable exhibition that fully warranted a more enduring publication, although a scholarly supplement on the exhibited works is available online.

Like the catalogue essays, the display is organised under such broad headings as ­‘Intimacy’, ‘Inner Conflict’ and ‘Contemplation’, in themselves interpreted so fluidly that the same subject can confusingly appear in more than one. In London (where this reviewer saw the exhibition), the first room (‘Self-Scrutiny’) was movingly hung with self-portraits and certainly the most handsomely displayed of all. But this was achieved by shunting the grandest self-portrait included, the Kenwood picture of c.1665 (cat. no.58), into an adjacent room labelled ‘Experimental Technique’. Even more nonsensically, this same room contained the heart-rending ­Lucretia of 1666 from Minneapolis (no.57) while her more melodramatic counterpart of two years earlier from Washington (no.115) was located three rooms away. Having secured the exceptionally generous loan of both these works, were visitors not entitled to view them side by side?

But the congested and occasionally maladroit display did have its compensations – and even revelations – and nowhere more so than in the room dominated by the stupendous Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis of 1661 (no.72; Fig.51). Nothing in Rembrandt’s ­earlier career quite prepares one for the barbaric splendour, solemn ritual and sulphurous colouring of this sinister masterpiece and to encounter its like one must leap forward to the demonic canvases of Emil Nolde of a ­century ago. But Rembrandt himself had anticipated its concealed lighting and rough-hewn figures in his Denial of St Peter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) of only one year before, which was ­sorely missing from the ­display; and, as the exhibition revealed, the grandeur of the setting and ceremonial arrangement of the figures in the now-dismembered canvas, as recorded in a preliminary drawing, have obvious affinities with the epic and monumental design of his Ecce Homo drypoint of 1655 (nos.31 and 71; Figs.50 and 52). Yet another discovery in this room was the juxtaposition of the Civilis alongside the etching of the Presentation in the Temple of c.1654 (no.77), where the looming and ominous figure of the crozier-bearing acolyte already inhabits the realm of Civilis’s nocturnal feast.

No less illuminating – and even more instructive – was a wall that combined works in different media depicting solitary female figures intimately engaged. This immediately prompted one to wonder how much it had always mattered to Rembrandt which tool he had chosen to adopt. Here the National Gallery’s own Woman bathing in a stream (no.54) was shown with the etchings of a Woman with an arrow (no.96), the Reclining female nude (no.35), the drawings of a Woman seated beside a stove (no.19) and the Nude woman resting on a cushion (no.36) in perfect harmony. Had space permitted, they would also have welcomed the British Museum’s incomparable drawing of a Young woman sleeping (no.70) to provide a rare glimpse of the essential Rembrandt, regardless of medium.

But the artist was not always so closely in tune with his subjects, as the exhibition also made tellingly clear through the inclusion of a handful of works presumably made for ­commercial purposes and certainly not with his heart in them. Chief among these was the rarely seen equestrian portrait of Frederik Rihel of c.1663 (no.53), which compensates in sheer size for what it lacks in conviction, and the Brünnhilde-like Juno of 1662–65 (no.21), whose formidable vacuousness makes one grateful that the artist was never moved to paint a companion likeness of Jupiter.

Much more engaging, however, were other female presences, especially the magnificently preserved Old woman reading of 1655 (no.98), the superb portraits of Catrina Hooghsaet (no.41) and the unknown Lady with a lap dog (no.42; Fig.53), whose expectant gaze strikingly resembles that of the Jewish bride (no.92) of a few years later. (Does this near duplication of pose weaken the supposition that the later painting might have been commissioned?) Yet even in closely comparable works such as the Portrait of a blond man (no.52) and the Portrait of an elderly man (no.102), both of 1667, Rembrandt’s degree of involvement appears to waver, the former rendered conscientiously but the latter truly captivatingly (Fig.54). With both his mirth and collar unbuttoned, and barely contained in his chair, he is Rembrandt’s posthumous homage to the late Frans Hals, who had died in the previous year.

One of the most beautifully displayed walls in the entire exhibition was that showing the Apostle Simon (no.110) and the two versions of the Apostle Bartholomew of 1657 and 1661 (nos.108 and 109) flanked by Glasgow’s Man in armour of 1655 (no.106) – all of unknown purpose and destination but of miraculous quality. Three of these are artfully posed, but the Getty Bartholomew (Fig.56) wilfully discomposed, his troubled countenance and corrugated features seemingly wondering ‘why paint me?’. In its unnerving frankness and honesty, this picture foreshadows the near uncomfortable realism of nineteenth-century masters such as Wilhelm Leibl and Thomas Eakins.

The three Apostles form part of a group of late religious ‘portraits’ by Rembrandt and his workshop that inevitably raise the perennial question of the authenticity of the master’s works – one that was courageously confronted in the 1991–92 exhibition but is completely bypassed here. Yet it is surely one of the prime obligations of an enterprise such as this to ­further our knowledge of an artist’s works as only an exhibition can. And in the case of late Rembrandt there are still many problems to be addressed which would have been well served by at least one room of disputed attributions for both the public and specialists to ponder. Among them might have featured the National Gallery’s own Old man in an armchair2 and the Saul and David from The Hague, which are closely comparable in style and invite direct comparison.

The last room in the exhibition, entitled ‘Reconciliation’, amounted instead to visual strife among a dazzling array of masterpieces in all media crowned by Jacob blessing the sons of Joseph of 1656 (no.120) and concluding with the last drawing and painting of Simeon in the Temple (nos.122 and 123), both of them reducing this favourite subject of Rembrandt’s to its essence and the latter (evidently left unfinished in his studio) not so much painted as encrusted onto the canvas – its surface weathered, weary and yet still quietly glowing. Both visually and emotionally these led one naturally back to the work with which the exhibition had begun – a mere slip of an ­etching of 1658 depicting the artist at work (Fig.55), its modesty and humility declared by its small size, skeletal handling and existence in only two known impressions. Returning to this bare visage after the riches that had poured forth from it, one could only marvel that so much of life had been in him.

The Amsterdam showing of this exhibition will be supplemented by many more etchings, several drawings – among them the third study for the Syndics from Berlin (no.68) – and three major paintings, including Jacob and the angel of c.1659 (no.118) and the Self-portrait as Zeuxis of c.1662 (no.20), the most allusive and characterful of Rembrandt’s late works in this vein. But by far the greatest addition will be the Portrait of a family (no.94) from Braunschweig, reunited with the Jewish bride – with which it bears so much in common – for the first time in nearly sixty years. Identical in size, comparable in style, date and format, and complementary in theme – one a loving ­couple, the other a loving family – questions are bound to be raised as to how these two masterpieces may be connected. Whereas the couple in the Jewish bride appear as Isaac and Rebecca, as seen in a preparatory drawing for this picture which will also be added at ­Amsterdam (no.93), the Braunschweig family carries no biblical allusions and seems simply to have commissioned a portrait of themselves. But why one so akin to the Jewish bride, and even sharing its landscape background? The two cannot have been conceived as pendants, the differing head levels, scale and extent of the figures precluding this. But their other affinities – size, setting, simplicity and sheer humanity – are unlikely to have been demanded by clients; and, whatever their origins, the two pictures were coupled in Rembrandt’s own mind, and became so in his art.

1    Catalogue: Rembrandt, the late works. By Jonathan Bikker and Gregor J.M. Weber et al. 304 pp. incl. 253 col. + 10 b. & w. ills. (National Gallery, London, and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2014), £19.95. ISBN 978–1–85709–557–9.
2    This painting was the subject of an article by Ernst van de Wetering in this Magazine 156 (June 2014), pp.382–84.