Visual Arts
Solving the Rembrandt Mystery
There are few artists whose work has been, and still is, so intensively studied as Rembrandt H. van Rijn (1606-1669). In 1997 two eminent Rembrandt scholars, Ernst van de Wetering and Albert Blankert, published works in English on the greatest master of Holland's Golden Age.
In Rembrandt, the Painter at Work Ernst van de Wetering provides an overview, intended for a general readership, of current knowledge concerning Rembrandt's preparations for and actual process of painting. The chairman of the Rembrandt Research Project (rrp) allows us to look over the shoulder of the seventeenth-century painter as he works in his studio. Though several chapters of the book have already been published separately, this is not apparent in the complete work. A careful avoidance of repetition has made the book not just a collection of essays but a fine rounded whole. Much of the information it brings together derives from Van de Wetering's almost thirty years of research with the rrp.
In his introduction the Rembrandt specialist reminds us that when the Rembrandt Research Project was set up in 1968 multi-disciplinary research was still unknown. Paintings were attributed to artists almost exclusively on grounds of their quality and style. The rrp expanded this frame of reference, first by taking into account also the thickness of the panels and later by involving in their judgements other technical aspects such as the size of the canvas, the medium used and the paint. Today it is almost unthinkable to pronounce on the authenticity of a painting without such investigation of the work of art as a material object. Dating methods drawn from archeology, combined with x-ray and infra-red examination, often cast doubt on earlier confident attributions. The reverse is also possible, as the inside of the dust-jacket around Rembrandt, the Painter at Work shows; here Van de Wetering argues that a portrait of the young Rembrandt, previously rejected as not authentic, is in his view genuinely the master's own work.
In the first chapter the author examines the studio secrets which, according to contemporary sources such as Arnold Houbraken, Rembrandt took with him to his grave. Also part of the myth is the image of Rembrandt as a nonconformist who flatly ignored established painting traditions, for instance relating to the preparation of the support. This was the standard view until thirty years ago, partly because of the known variation in the composition of the base coats. According to Van de Wetering, however, the observed differences were mostly due to faulty interpretation of the paint samples investigated. Making the point that, even with advanced techniques borrowed from auxiliary sciences, interpretation and close scrutiny are still important.
Modern research has to a great extent demythologised both the figure of Rembrandt and his technique. Rembrandt, the Painter at Work seeks in its turn to contribute to this process. But even though it turns out that Rembrandt's use of materials and his painting technique are in accordance with the traditional practices of his time, he was still incontrovertibly a highly original and adventurous creative spirit, an explorer who pushed back the frontiers of painting technique. From a skilful, careful painter he, like Titian, evolved a characteristic impasto use of paint with powerful brushstrokes.
The findings which Van de Wetering records here - with the occasional Dutch turn of phrase in his English - sometimes extend beyond Rembrandt's oeuvre. For instance, when the author punctures the notion of the painter's studio as a closed production system, dealing
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