The deal is done. The Louvre and Rijksmuseum have come into shared ownership of Rembrandt’s earliest full-length, life-size portraits. Buyers and sellers proclaim piously that they were driven by angst that these cultural treasures might disappear to Arabia or China. Schwartz tests that proposition and finds it wanting. Continue reading “344 Some Rothschild Rembrandts, seen and unseen”
Rembrandt
342 Rembrandt’s fourth sense: a quick reaction
At a local auction in a small town in New Jersey, two days ago, a small painting of a fainting woman was sold for $870,000, a thousand times more than its high estimate. The buyer and underbuyer were betting on the chance that it is one of the earliest paintings by Rembrandt. Schwartz thinks they were making a good bet. Continue reading “342 Rembrandt’s fourth sense: a quick reaction”
341 The transparent connoisseur 3: The 30 million pound question
A wrong call by the Rembrandt Research Project (“the authority on Rembrandt and has final say in whether a painting is genuine”- Wikipedia) cost the heirs of the generous art collector Harold Samuel a not so small fortune. Schwartz tells the tale and discusses the issues involved. Continue reading “341 The transparent connoisseur 3: The 30 million pound question”
339 Latest Rembrandt
Rembrandt’s last dated drawing and the painting that was on his easel when he died both depict the same subject – Simeon with the Christ child in the Temple – in much the same way. In honor of the memorable exhibition Late Rembrandt Schwartz publishes some thoughts on these exceptional works.
The meanings of Rembrandt
In October 2014 the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest opened the large and ambitious exhibition Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age, with 195 displays, mainly paintings. It was accompanied by a correspondingly large, magnificently printed 606-page catalogue. Preceding the entries are five essays, one of which I wrote and which with the kind permission of the museum I make available on Schwartzlist Documents.
Gary Schwartz, “The meanings of Rembrandt,” in exhib. cat. Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age, Budapest (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum) 2014, pp. 36-57
A corpus of Rembrandt paintings as a test case for connoisseurship
From the proceedings of a congress held at the Ecole du Louvre on 21-23 October 2011
Connoisseurship: l’oeil, la raison et l’instrument, ed. Patrick Michel, Paris (Ecole du Louvre) 2014, pp. 229-37.
Open pdf (663 kB) at Connoisseurship Schwartz
The Rembrandt Research Project had everything going for it when it set out in 1968 to examine the authorship of all the paintings seriously attributed to the master. However, by 1991, after publishing three massive volumes covering half of Rembrandt’s career, it ran out of steam and four of the five members quit the project. The remaining member, Ernst van de Wetering, took it over, admitting that vols. 1-3 were a failure. Schwartz asks why and suggests that the fault lay less with the members of the project than with the impossible pretensions of connoisseurship itself.
Rembrandt’s Dürer
Rembrandt’s Dürer is the text of a talk delivered by Gary Schwartz on 9 March 2013 at the opening of a sales exhibition of work on paper by both artists at Christopher-Clark Fine Art, 377 Geary Street, San Francisco. These pages are from a printed brochure produced by the gallery.
323 The Rákóczy identity
The emergence of an unknown painting with a close resemblance to an engraving said to reproduce a painting by Rembrandt brings a host of associated images, objects and persons into play. Continue reading “323 The Rákóczy identity”
321 Rembrandt, Rubens, the Beau Sancy and the Jew
Cultural pessimists who are sure of the ongoing decline in our appreciation for art will have no choice, after reading Schwartzlist 321, but to change their tune if not their mind. Continue reading “321 Rembrandt, Rubens, the Beau Sancy and the Jew”
319 Chopped liver at Woburn Abbey
The world press has announced that a painting of an old man in Woburn Abbey, England, has been newly discovered to be an authentic Rembrandt. Schwartz, who included the painting in his book on Rembrandt of 1984, as have all other cataloguers of Rembrandt paintings from 1836 on, is incensed that the abbey practices such flagrant spin, and that the press feeds it to us so uncritically. Continue reading “319 Chopped liver at Woburn Abbey”