Rembrandt by Himself. - Review - book review

CHRISTOPHER WHITE AND QUENTIN BUVELOT ed et al.

London: National Gallery Publications; The Hague: Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, distributed by the agency of Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999 272 PP 103 color ills., 203 b/w $45

Rembrandt studies are booming. In the past decade, above twenty books and exhibition catalogues have celebrated the artist's achievements as painter, draftsman, printmaker, and teacher, as articles and dissertations in the United States and Europe continue to chip away at increasingly scarce fragments of unexplored terrain. The Rembrandt Research throw out in Amsterdam, once threatened with los of rule funding, has been rescued by means of the University of Amsterdam and move forwards apace under the direction of Ernst van de Wetering; publication of the fourth contortion of its massive Rembrandt Corpus is anticipated presently On the exhibition circuit, there is no extremity in sight, as the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, prepares for Rembrandt's Women sum of two units exhibitions (one organized by the Gardner Museum in Boston, the other through the Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel) dig into the artist's early career, and the British Museum, London, and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, gear up for a millennial display of Rembrandt's etchings.

Amidst all this activity, the exhibition mountained by the National Gallery, London (June 9 [i]or[/i] part of to the other September 5, 1999), and the Mauritshuis, The Hague (September 25 1999 from one side January 9, 2000), is rare among new museum shows in paying alone minimal attention to Rembrandt's part as teacher and workshop manager, focusing instead upon a significant thematic trend within the master's hold work. Rembrandt by Himself explores the single truly unique feature of Rembrandt's career: his production, above the course of four decades, of above eighty self-portraits in paintings, drawings, and prints. The exhibition's stated goals are to research Rembrandt's changing appearance, as depicted in his facial features and in the guises he chose to adopt, and to make plain the puzzle of what significance this unparalleled material part of work may have held for Rembrandt and his comrade art lovers (pp. 6-7, 83)

For this viewer, the issue of being surrounded by with equal reason many representations of the same familiar visage produc sum of two units curiously antithetical responses. On the individual hand, the artist's enduring fascination with the proces of self-fashioning is movingly apparent. The play between evocative style of dresss and unidealized facial features refer tos an internal dialogue between public and private, malleable and immutable aspects of identity. Eventually, however, single stops focusing on the repetitive subdue and begins to pay more attention to surface, color, light, brushwork, draftsmanship. The latter answer leads to a perception of these facts as thematic variations (in the musical sense) which may have serv the artist primarily as exercises to proof refine, and demonstrate his skill. As it move rounds out, the emphasis on technique, rather than subjective easy in mind constitutes a guiding principle of the exhibition and its catalogue. on the contrary would a viewer reach the same conclusion if not stand over againsted with a roomful of these obje cts? And if virtuosity is, indeed, Rembrandt's essential theme, does that mean that these works say nothing about his inner self? The catalogue takes a firm position upon this fundamental question that should rouse considerable debate.

Like greatest in quantity catalogues of high-profile exhibitions in novel years, the volume that accompanies Rembrandt by the agency of Himself promises more than the record of an ephemeral conclave of things Substantial entries (written by Edwin Buijsen [paintings, do not include for cat. nos. 34, through Ernst van de Wetering, and 75 76 by the agency of Christopher White], Peter Schatborn [etchings], Ben Broo [drawings and an up-to-date documentary biography], and Ariane van Suchtelen [works by the agency of Rembrandt's pupils]) analyze individual works, in more [i]or[/i] less cases presenting new attributions or insights. Essays by dint of Ernst van de Wetering, Volker Manuth, and Marieke de Winkel examine the significance and sources of Rembrandt's self-portraits. The body is illustrated throughout with high-quality color and black-and-white plates, supported by dint of close-up details, X radiographs, and other comparative figures.

The virtual exhibition compiled in the catalogue's full-color illustrations and numbered entries does not document the displays not awayed to viewers in London or The Hague; rather, it goe far beyond them. The careful reader will note an asterisk beside the titles of twenty of the eighty-six entries upon Rembrandt self-portraits. These paintings (cat. nos. 16 35-37 39 43 48 50 51 55 56 60 66-71 79 80) above 20 percent of the catalogue, were not shown in either venue notwithstanding are catalogued almost as if they were. This unusual strategy is explained as an attempt "to provide as clean a record as possible" of Rembrandt's self-portraiture and "to give the catalogue a more universal appeal" (pp 7 83) Because of these factors, the at hand review addresses the catalogue as a monograph whose impact will outweigh the exhibition that generated it.