On popular demand, Schwartz returns to the vexed question of Rembrandt’s character. A new article disputes the archival basis for Machiel Bosman’s aggressive defense of Rembrandt as a man driven by love of family to bankrupt himself.
Rembrandt
Yes, but: Rembrandt as an unstable medium
“From the word go, admiration for Rembrandt has was offset by annoyances and uncertainties of various kinds.” Thoughts on the matter as published in the Rembrandt Year volume of The Low Countries, 14 (2006), pp. 221-26
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“The years have imposed heavy tribulations”: Rembrandt’s portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert
Working in 2021 on a book about a disputed Rembrandt self-portrait, I wished to refer to the article below, from July 1992, for its comments on the Rembrandt Research Project. The English text had not been published before. If I am not mistaken, this article has never been referred to in subsequent literature on the painting.
394 The Rembrandt theft of a hundred years ago today
A centennial moment in Schwartz’s art-historical life. One hundred years ago today a Rembrandt self-portrait was stolen from the museum in Weimar. He is writing a book on the painting. A snippet from its fascinating story. Plus a complete lecture and q&a on the exhibition Rembrandt’s orient. Continue reading “394 The Rembrandt theft of a hundred years ago today”
391 Four strains of the Rembrandt virus
During the so-called holidays, Schwartz carried out a very long overdue and immensely satisfying rearrangement of the books in the room he works in. Passing through his hands once more were a favorite collecting genre: over-the-top books on Rembrandt. He comments on four of them. Below the column is an invitation to join a Rembrandt webinar in which Schwartz is participating on 19 January.
390 What did Rembrandt have against spires?
Rembrandt suffered from a rare condition that has not yet been diagnosed. He had an aversion to spires and sometimes to towers, lopping them off his depictions of buildings we know to have had them. Schwartz worries the issue.
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From Otto Benesch to Peter Schatborn: a concordance
For whatever bad reason this has happened, the long-awaited catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings by Peter Schatborn, former head of the department of prints and drawings of the Rijksmuseum, has been published without a concordance in which one can look up the drawings by their Benesch numbers. Those are the numbers that have been used universally since the appearance in 1954-57 of the catalogue by Otto Benesch, edited by his wife Eva Benesch, In 1974, after the death of Otto, Eva brought out a revised edition. Both were published by Phaidon Press. Peter Schatborn’s catalogue came out in 2019 in a volume that also contains Rembrandt’s etchings: Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt: the complete etchings and drawings, Cologne (Taschen) 2019.
Because I found Schatborn’s catalogue unacceptably irritating to use without a concordance – for which reason I have not been using it at all – I have made a concordance, which I make available to all.
Comparing Rembrandt and Saenredam: Het belang van banale zaken
In an article in the Dutch art magazine Kunstschrift, the editor, Mariette Haveman, disparaged the importance Schwartz attaches to documentary records as evidence for understanding Rembrandt as a person. Schwartz responds.
Letter to the editor: Gary Schwartz, 8 December 1991: “Het belang van banale zaken,” Kunstschrift 36:1 (1992), p. 6
388 Convention and uniqueness in Rembrandt’s response to the east
On 29 and 30 October 2020, the ceremonial openings were to have taken place of an exhibition in Kunstmuseum Basel of which I am guest curator: Rembrandt’s orient: west meets east in Dutch art of the seventeenth century. Because of the pandemic, no openings are being held. Today, I am pleased to say, 31 October, the exhibition is open to the public. Travel restrictions have kept me from being in on the hanging or seeing the exhibition at all for the time being. I can only hope that I can see it before it closes on 14 February 2021 and that by the time the exhibition moves on to Museum Barberini in Potsdam in March 2021 there will be an opening at which I can speak. The catalogue includes an essay of mine on Rembrandt. It had to be shortened, but I have permission from the museums to publish the complete version on the Schwartzlist. The essay is a review of oriental motifs in Rembrandt’s art, which tend to be conventional, and an argument concerning the nature of one group of works that is entirely unique.
To entice you into reading the essay, this column shows only the illustrations. To find out what I have to say about them, click here.
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Convention and uniqueness in Rembrandt’s response to the east
The full version of an essay published in the catalogue to the exhibition Rembandt’s Orient: West Meets East in Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century, Basel (Kunstmuseum Basel) and Potsdam (Museum Barberini) 2020-21.
Continue reading “Convention and uniqueness in Rembrandt’s response to the east”