The contributions of the Rembrandt Research Project to the study of Rembrandt paintings are countless and invaluable. In particular, the insistence of Ernst van de Wetering that the physical study of paintings be integrated into the practice of connoisseurship has changed the face of the field. However, inconsistencies in the six volumes of its Corpus of Rembrandt paintings leave us in uncertainty concerning its reconstruction of Rembrandt’s oeuvre. Schwartz puts his finger on a possible re-attribution that should be forthcoming, but isn’t.
Continue reading “364 The transparent connoisseur 5: Keeping the Rembrandt Research Project to its word”
Rembrandt
363 Saenredam and Huygens; Rubens and Rembrandt
“Saenredam, Huygens and the Utrecht bull” was Gary Schwartz’s first publication as an art historian. He looks back on how it came into being and what it meant in his life. Schwartz would like to think of the Dutch- and Flemish-speaking low countries as one culture, but circumstances keep intruding on this ideal image. Circumstances such as the lives and posterities of Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt van Rijn.
Continue reading “363 Saenredam and Huygens; Rubens and Rembrandt”
Rubens in Holland, Rembrandt in Flanders
The 2018 volume of The Low Countries, an outstanding yearbook to which I have been contributing for twenty years, is the last to appear in print. From now on it will be brought out online only. The yearbook starts out with 100 pages of contributions from CODART members, in recognition of CODART’s twentieth anniversary. Mine juxtaposes the very limited cross-border experiences of the two giants of seventeenth-century art in the Low Countries and tells about the one time, two hundred years later, when they were briefly conjoined as equals in each other’s countries.
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354 How I became a Rembrandt scholar
To mark Rembrandt’s upcoming birthday, Schwartz reminisces about his beginnings in Rembrandt studies half a century ago.
352 Up the Rembrandt school!
The sale of a painting by Govert Flinck for a higher price than some Rembrandts have fetched in recent years prompts a reflection on the ongoing (and never-ending) revision of our scale of values. Continue reading “352 Up the Rembrandt school!”
344 Some Rothschild Rembrandts, seen and unseen
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”
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