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Views & Reviews Amsterdam Rijksmuseum Late Rembrandt 16 april 2015
Citation preview
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 1/5
Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see thisshow'
Rembrandt: The Late Works at the National Gallery contains a staggering number ofmasterpieces, says Mark Hudson
By Mark Hudson
12:05PM BST 13 Oct 2014
Professional criticism and a degree of jadedness go hand in hand. But you’d have to be pretty tired
of art, and probably of life itself, not to get excited at the prospect of seeing 91 Rembrandts.
Indeed, I was running a mental countdown to this exhibition a good week before I got my foot
through the door.
It’s the culmination of a bumper year for artists who achieved ultimate greatness in their final
years. Matisse Cut-Outs was the most popular exhibition in the entire history of Tate, while Late
Turner is still packing them in at Tate Britain. Now at the National we have what promises to be
the crowning glory of this annus mirabilis of “late style”.
Yet with expectation comes a degree of anxiety. Will the curators have secured enough works of
sufficient heft? And does Rembrandt himself carry quite the incontestable weight he once did, or
has Vermeer, long considered the junior partner, hogged the limelight in our perception of the
Dutch Golden Age over the last two decades?
More than that, recent scholarship has given us a more clear-eyed sense of the artist’s alienated
final years. Rembrandt may have been bankrupted, having lost the support of his respectable
burgher audience, and living in sin with his former housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels, but the artist
revealed in books such as Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes, retained a canny sense of how to
manipulate the viewer. Was the great “humanity” on which his reputation is based, exemplified by
his extraordinary body of self-portraits, the product of painfully candid self-scrutiny, or a
sophisticated, yet essentially sentimental gloss he was able to lay over his images at will?
As if wishing to forestall such doubts, the exhibition hits hard in the first room with four top-notch
self-portraits chronicling the artist’s ageing over the last decade of his life. If the first, from
Washington, slightly overcooks the pathos of the anxiously knit brows, the other three are stunning
– all very well-known works from the Rijksmuseum, National Gallery and Mauritshuis, but no less
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 2/5
jaw-dropping for that. Yes,
there’s a degree of knowing
theatricality, the sense of him
watching us marvelling at his
depth of feeling, but that’s all
part of what makes them
compelling.
Coming in the wake of a wave
of enthusiasm for the master
illusionist Vermeer, the
exhibition restores a sense of
novelty to Rembrandt’s late
technique. Where Vermeer’s
every last brush-mark is
meticulously blended into the
surface, Rembrandt’s
enjoyment of the fully loaded
brush is everywhere visible, the
sense of exuberant energy
belying his advanced years.
In the massive Conspiracy of the Batavians from Stockholm, the circle of figures is lit from within,
blocking out the source of light, but bathing them in a blazing amber glow so they appear almost
incandescent. If there’s an illustrative, almost naive quality to some of the faces, it’s offset by the
monumentality of the figures and the sheer force of the whole experience. This is one of a number
of works here that set you wondering at the horse-trading that must have gone on to secure them
for the exhibition.
There are a lot of etchings and some superb drawings, all more than worth looking at in their own
right. Most, though, are from the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, and it’s hard to
focus on them when you’ve got major paintings looming around you, such as the Stockholm work,
that you won’t otherwise have the opportunity to see without considerable expense and
inconvenience.
Another such painting is the large Jacob Blessing the Sons of Jacob from Kassel, which veers
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 3/5
towards the sugary in the faces
of the children, and is patently
unfinished even by the
provisional standards of
Rembrandt’s late work. Yet the
tragic weight of the recumbent
patriarch, contrasting with the
dandyish Joseph standing
beside him, leaves you feeling
that a problematic painting by
Rembrandt is more worthy of
attention than a fully resolved
one by just about anybody else.
Time and again I was reminded
of Rembrandt’s much later
compatriot van Gogh, in the
earthy directness of the vision,
and a compassionate sense of
the physicality of the human
clay. There’s a pasty plainness
to the faces in pendant
portraits of a man and woman,
lent from Washington, but also
a kind of transcendent vitality.
These paintings might appear
masterpieces if they weren’t
hanging near the National
Gallery’s own portraits of
Jacob Trip and his wife
Margaretha de Geer, which
carry the idea of the individual
portrait to a level of daunting, hypnotic brilliance.
A few feet away is one of the greatest of all group portraits, the huge The Syndics of the Drapers’
Guild from the Rijksmuseum, in which the six black-hatted burghers look out at us and beyond us
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 4/5
with faces that are at once convincing psychological portraits and hauntingly mask-like. Once you
get drawn into the play of their sightlines and the pattern of their stark puritan collars over the
mostly quite dark composition, it takes a real effort of will to drag yourself away.
There are number of secondary
paintings here which under
normal circumstances would
be well worthy of scrutiny,
including two very different
images of the tragic Roman
heroine Lucretia. Indeed, there
are a number of primary works,
notably exquisite portraits of
Rembrandt’s son Titus at his
desk and an elderly woman
reading, which in any other
context would be highlights, but which struggle to get attention beside another of the show’s major
coups, the Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, better known as The Jewish Bride, also from
the Rijksmuseum.
Is there a more frank and intimate depiction of the joy and vulnerability of the matrimonial
moment, as the man lays his hand lovingly on his new wife’s breast and she places her fingers on
his hand? Our attention moves continually between the tender intensity of their expressions and the
sumptuousness of their clothes, the man’s voluminous sleeve captured in thick impasto overlain
with a shimmering golden glaze.
The painting is balanced by the frankly sexy A Woman bathing in a Stream, a private moment
captured in a few economic, yet voluptuous brush strokes, which leads us towards the great erotic
masterpiece of the final room, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter. The thoughtfulness of the face,
musing on the contents of the letter, contrasts with the nakedness of the biblical heroine, embodied
by the golden flesh of Rembrandt’s lover Hendrickje, which we and the artist are given full
opportunity to ogle – the noble and purely carnal aspects of love captured in a masterpiece of
vicarious voyeurism.
In the final corner of the exhibition we see Simeon with the Infant Christ in the Temple, created,
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 5/5
we must assume, in the artist’s
final days, in which form blurs
into an image of startling, yet
largely accidental modernity.
The exhibition makes little
attempt, probably sensibly, to
chart the progress of
Rembrandt’s deterioration
towards that point. The rooms
are organised thematically, but
texts are confined to the
printed gallery guide, so you
have full opportunity to simply
look at the paintings and enjoy
them in your own way.
This is an exhibition that makes
you realise there is still
validity in the old idea of the
universal masterpiece. I
counted 10, maybe 11, along
with perhaps 20 paintings that are merely superb and a few more that look like generic Rembrandt.
As to which paintings fall into which category, you can make your own mind up, because if you
have any feeling for Rembrandt, for painting or for art of any sort, you must see this show. When it
comes to the great themes of human existence, there is still no one above Rembrandt.
The exhibition runs from Oct 15 – Jan 18. Details here
How we moderate
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015
19-4-2015 Rembrandt late gem to be shown in UK first time | Art and design | The Guardian
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Cheader%20class%3D%22content__head%20tonal__head%20tonal__head--tone-news%0A%20%20%20%20%22%20style… 1/3
Rembrandt late gem to be shown inUK first time
The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis among late works on show at
National gallery exhibition in London
The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Sunday 5 October 2014 17.26 BST
807Shares
It was meant to be Rembrandt’s triumphant comeback from bankruptcy but ended up
being one of his most demoralising and disastrous paintings ever.
Unloved in the 17th century, but revered today, the painting is now set to travel to the
UK for first time, 352 years after it was rejected by the civic leaders of Amsterdam.
The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis is a remarkable painting that
usually hangs – and rarely leaves –Sweden’s national museum in Stockholm.
It seems to revel in barbarism, with its deformed and grotesque characters. Drastically
cut down by Rembrandt, Simon Schama once said of it: “This may just be the most
heartbreaking fragment in the entire history of painting.”
The closure of the Swedish museum for redevelopment has allowed for a one-off
opportunity. It currently hangs on loan in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and will, it has
just been announced, travel to London in October for the National Gallery’s major
exhibition exploring the late works ofRembrandt.
Betsy Wieseman, curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings at theNational Gallery, said
the painting’s “raw and almost brutal” figures would have worked perfectly in its
intended home – several metres off the ground in Amsterdam’s misleadingly titled
Town Hall, the city’s grandest building, which later became the royal palace.
The painting hung there briefly until the city’s civic leaders returned it, unwanted, to
Rembrandt, who cut it down by nearly three-quarters, from just over 30 sq metres to 3
metres wide and 1.96 metres high.
There are different theories as to what happened in Amsterdam. Certainly there was
good reason to take against it: there were not enough people in it for contemporary
taste and it would have been far more naturalistic than the city leaders were expecting,
19-4-2015 Rembrandt late gem to be shown in UK first time | Art and design | The Guardian
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Cheader%20class%3D%22content__head%20tonal__head%20tonal__head--tone-news%0A%20%20%20%20%22%20style… 2/3
with the one-eyed Dutch hero Claudius Civilis quite shocking – shown full-frontally
rather than the usual profile.
Another reason may have been less aesthetic. Jonathan Bikker, the Rijksmuseum’s
curator of research, said one theory was that Rembrandt, who declared himself
bankrupt in 1656, had been asked to make changes, for which he was going to charge.
“The mayors simply said: ‘No way, forget about it, 1,200 guilders is enough!’”
Whatever the reasons, it was returned to the artist and replaced by a far inferior work
by Govert Flinck, which they already had in their collection and was fairly cheap to get
retouched.
The securing of Claudius Civilis is a real coup but only one of many impressive loans for
the National Gallery exhibition. These include The Jewish Bride and The Syndics from
the Rijksmuseum, which will also host the Rembrandt show next year.
The Mauritshuis in The Hague is sending two of its Rembrandt jewels including Portrait
of an Elderly Man (1667) and the artist’s final self-portrait from 1669. It will not,
though, be sending two remarkable paintings – one of Homer and another of Two
Moors. The gallery’s head of collections, Edwin Buijsen, admitted a degree of relief.
“These two paintings were also requested but we cannot lend them because they were
gifted to the museum by a former director and his will stated they should never leave
the Mauritshuis ... we can never lend them,” he said. “The National Gallery tried but it
is legally not possible.”
The Rembrandt show will be the first in-depth exploration of Rembrandt’s late works, a
time when his creativity and ambition to break conventions burned brighter than ever.
Wieseman said it was hard to keep up with what might have been going on in his mind.
“His late works are his thorniest,” she said. “There are so many questions because
there is such a variation in technique. He is not doing a linear progression, he is
bouncing back and forth – attacking one thing and then discarding it, taking it up again
10 years later. It is really difficult to figure out.”
The idea of a major late Rembrandt show has been around for 20 years, since a big
exhibition at the National Gallery when curators talked about the relative lack of in-
depth study into his late works.
One reason it has taken so long is that the Rijksmuseum has been being redeveloped for
10 years.
There will be about 90 works – 40 paintings, 30 prints and 20 drawings – and visitors
may well find him exasperatingly idiosyncratic.
“Some days I love Rembrandt; some days I want to kick his ass,” said Wieseman. “It is
19-4-2015 Rembrandt late gem to be shown in UK first time | Art and design | The Guardian
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Cheader%20class%3D%22content__head%20tonal__head%20tonal__head--tone-news%0A%20%20%20%20%22%20style… 3/3
challenging to get inside his head and figure out what he was trying to do ... but very
rewarding.”
Rembrandt: The Late Works is at the National Gallery, London, from 15 October to
18 January 2015
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 1/5
Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see thisshow'
Rembrandt: The Late Works at the National Gallery contains a staggering number ofmasterpieces, says Mark Hudson
By Mark Hudson
12:05PM BST 13 Oct 2014
Professional criticism and a degree of jadedness go hand in hand. But you’d have to be pretty tired
of art, and probably of life itself, not to get excited at the prospect of seeing 91 Rembrandts.
Indeed, I was running a mental countdown to this exhibition a good week before I got my foot
through the door.
It’s the culmination of a bumper year for artists who achieved ultimate greatness in their final
years. Matisse Cut-Outs was the most popular exhibition in the entire history of Tate, while Late
Turner is still packing them in at Tate Britain. Now at the National we have what promises to be
the crowning glory of this annus mirabilis of “late style”.
Yet with expectation comes a degree of anxiety. Will the curators have secured enough works of
sufficient heft? And does Rembrandt himself carry quite the incontestable weight he once did, or
has Vermeer, long considered the junior partner, hogged the limelight in our perception of the
Dutch Golden Age over the last two decades?
More than that, recent scholarship has given us a more clear-eyed sense of the artist’s alienated
final years. Rembrandt may have been bankrupted, having lost the support of his respectable
burgher audience, and living in sin with his former housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels, but the artist
revealed in books such as Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes, retained a canny sense of how to
manipulate the viewer. Was the great “humanity” on which his reputation is based, exemplified by
his extraordinary body of self-portraits, the product of painfully candid self-scrutiny, or a
sophisticated, yet essentially sentimental gloss he was able to lay over his images at will?
As if wishing to forestall such doubts, the exhibition hits hard in the first room with four top-notch
self-portraits chronicling the artist’s ageing over the last decade of his life. If the first, from
Washington, slightly overcooks the pathos of the anxiously knit brows, the other three are stunning
– all very well-known works from the Rijksmuseum, National Gallery and Mauritshuis, but no less
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 2/5
jaw-dropping for that. Yes,
there’s a degree of knowing
theatricality, the sense of him
watching us marvelling at his
depth of feeling, but that’s all
part of what makes them
compelling.
Coming in the wake of a wave
of enthusiasm for the master
illusionist Vermeer, the
exhibition restores a sense of
novelty to Rembrandt’s late
technique. Where Vermeer’s
every last brush-mark is
meticulously blended into the
surface, Rembrandt’s
enjoyment of the fully loaded
brush is everywhere visible, the
sense of exuberant energy
belying his advanced years.
In the massive Conspiracy of the Batavians from Stockholm, the circle of figures is lit from within,
blocking out the source of light, but bathing them in a blazing amber glow so they appear almost
incandescent. If there’s an illustrative, almost naive quality to some of the faces, it’s offset by the
monumentality of the figures and the sheer force of the whole experience. This is one of a number
of works here that set you wondering at the horse-trading that must have gone on to secure them
for the exhibition.
There are a lot of etchings and some superb drawings, all more than worth looking at in their own
right. Most, though, are from the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, and it’s hard to
focus on them when you’ve got major paintings looming around you, such as the Stockholm work,
that you won’t otherwise have the opportunity to see without considerable expense and
inconvenience.
Another such painting is the large Jacob Blessing the Sons of Jacob from Kassel, which veers
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 3/5
towards the sugary in the faces
of the children, and is patently
unfinished even by the
provisional standards of
Rembrandt’s late work. Yet the
tragic weight of the recumbent
patriarch, contrasting with the
dandyish Joseph standing
beside him, leaves you feeling
that a problematic painting by
Rembrandt is more worthy of
attention than a fully resolved
one by just about anybody else.
Time and again I was reminded
of Rembrandt’s much later
compatriot van Gogh, in the
earthy directness of the vision,
and a compassionate sense of
the physicality of the human
clay. There’s a pasty plainness
to the faces in pendant
portraits of a man and woman,
lent from Washington, but also
a kind of transcendent vitality.
These paintings might appear
masterpieces if they weren’t
hanging near the National
Gallery’s own portraits of
Jacob Trip and his wife
Margaretha de Geer, which
carry the idea of the individual
portrait to a level of daunting, hypnotic brilliance.
A few feet away is one of the greatest of all group portraits, the huge The Syndics of the Drapers’
Guild from the Rijksmuseum, in which the six black-hatted burghers look out at us and beyond us
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 4/5
with faces that are at once convincing psychological portraits and hauntingly mask-like. Once you
get drawn into the play of their sightlines and the pattern of their stark puritan collars over the
mostly quite dark composition, it takes a real effort of will to drag yourself away.
There are number of secondary
paintings here which under
normal circumstances would
be well worthy of scrutiny,
including two very different
images of the tragic Roman
heroine Lucretia. Indeed, there
are a number of primary works,
notably exquisite portraits of
Rembrandt’s son Titus at his
desk and an elderly woman
reading, which in any other
context would be highlights, but which struggle to get attention beside another of the show’s major
coups, the Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, better known as The Jewish Bride, also from
the Rijksmuseum.
Is there a more frank and intimate depiction of the joy and vulnerability of the matrimonial
moment, as the man lays his hand lovingly on his new wife’s breast and she places her fingers on
his hand? Our attention moves continually between the tender intensity of their expressions and the
sumptuousness of their clothes, the man’s voluminous sleeve captured in thick impasto overlain
with a shimmering golden glaze.
The painting is balanced by the frankly sexy A Woman bathing in a Stream, a private moment
captured in a few economic, yet voluptuous brush strokes, which leads us towards the great erotic
masterpiece of the final room, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter. The thoughtfulness of the face,
musing on the contents of the letter, contrasts with the nakedness of the biblical heroine, embodied
by the golden flesh of Rembrandt’s lover Hendrickje, which we and the artist are given full
opportunity to ogle – the noble and purely carnal aspects of love captured in a masterpiece of
vicarious voyeurism.
In the final corner of the exhibition we see Simeon with the Infant Christ in the Temple, created,
19-4-2015 Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery, review: 'You must see this show' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11158594/Rembrandt-Late-Works-National-Gallery.html 5/5
we must assume, in the artist’s
final days, in which form blurs
into an image of startling, yet
largely accidental modernity.
The exhibition makes little
attempt, probably sensibly, to
chart the progress of
Rembrandt’s deterioration
towards that point. The rooms
are organised thematically, but
texts are confined to the
printed gallery guide, so you
have full opportunity to simply
look at the paintings and enjoy
them in your own way.
This is an exhibition that makes
you realise there is still
validity in the old idea of the
universal masterpiece. I
counted 10, maybe 11, along
with perhaps 20 paintings that are merely superb and a few more that look like generic Rembrandt.
As to which paintings fall into which category, you can make your own mind up, because if you
have any feeling for Rembrandt, for painting or for art of any sort, you must see this show. When it
comes to the great themes of human existence, there is still no one above Rembrandt.
The exhibition runs from Oct 15 – Jan 18. Details here
How we moderate
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015
19-4-2015 De oude Rembrandt had het lef om vrij te zijn - NRC Handelsblad van zaterdag 7 februari 2015
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Carticle%20class%3D%22nh%22%20style%3D%22box-sizing%3A%20border-box%3B%20display%3A%20block%3B%20… 1/7
De oudeRembrandthad het lefom vrij tezijnRijksmuseum
In zijn latere schilderijen laat
Rembrandt, in een ongekend
losse stijl, vooral zijn sensitieve,
menselijke kant zien. In het
Rijksmuseum hangen
bruiklenen uit de hele wereld.
19-4-2015 De oude Rembrandt had het lef om vrij te zijn - NRC Handelsblad van zaterdag 7 februari 2015
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Carticle%20class%3D%22nh%22%20style%3D%22box-sizing%3A%20border-box%3B%20display%3A%20block%3B%20… 2/7
Door SANDRA SMALLENBURG 7 FEBRUARI 2015
Wat voor man zou Rembrandt zijn geweest? Een betweter of een driftkop, een tedere minnaar, een
zachtaardige vader? Al in de eerste zaal van de tentoonstelling Late Rembrandt in het Rijksmuseum
dringt die vraag zich op. Vanaf drie wanden kijkt de schilder je intens aan en steeds doet zijn blik een
ander karakter vermoeden. Links, op het zelfportret uit 1659 van de National Gallery in Washington,
oogt de kunstenaar een beetje misprijzend, met zijn melancholische ogen en zijn zuinige pruilmondje. Het
middelste doek, Zelfportret als de apostel Paulus (1661) uit het Rijksmuseum, is juist vrolijk en guitig,
alsof Rembrandt ons zojuist iets wijsneuzerigs heeft toegefluisterd. Rechts, op het zelfportret van de
National Gallery in Londen dat hij maakte in zijn sterfjaar 1669, kijkt Rembrandt tevreden en
zelfgenoegzaam – een man die veel heeft bereikt in zijn leven.
Het drietal zelfportretten is een knallende binnenkomer van een fabelachtige blockbuster over de laatste
twintig jaar van Rembrandts leven. Ze zijn niet eens zo groot, deze schilderijen, en ze hangen ver uiteen
aan de donkergrijze wanden van de Philipsvleugel. Maar hun aanwezigheid is zo krachtig dat ze met zijn
drieën met gemak de ruimte vullen. Zoals sommige mensen met hun persoonlijkheid een ruimte kunnen
19-4-2015 De oude Rembrandt had het lef om vrij te zijn - NRC Handelsblad van zaterdag 7 februari 2015
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Carticle%20class%3D%22nh%22%20style%3D%22box-sizing%3A%20border-box%3B%20display%3A%20block%3B%20… 3/7
innemen, zo bezitten deze drie schilderijen een enorm charisma. Het zijn portretten die stralen van
zelfvertrouwen. Dit is een man die lak heeft aan wat anderen van hem denken.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669) hield geen dagboek bij en schreef geen uitvoerige brieven.
We kijken naar die gezichten van verf alsof we daaraan de gedachten van de maker kunnen aflezen. Late
Rembrandt is een tentoonstelling die de bezoeker uitnodigt om op zoek te gaan naar die onderliggende
emoties. De expositie is ingedeeld in tien thema’s als ‘intimiteit’, ‘innerlijke strijd’, ‘contemplatie’ en
‘verzoening’. „In de laatste jaren van zijn leven gaat het werk van Rembrandt niet meer over actie en
passie”, aldus Gregor Weber, een van de samenstellers van de expositie. „In dat late werk draait het om
verstilling.”
Late Rembrandt. 12 febr t/m 17 mei in het
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Dagelijks 9-17u.
Catalogus 40 euro. Inl: rijksmuseum.nl.
●●●●●
19-4-2015 De oude Rembrandt had het lef om vrij te zijn - NRC Handelsblad van zaterdag 7 februari 2015
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Carticle%20class%3D%22nh%22%20style%3D%22box-sizing%3A%20border-box%3B%20display%3A%20block%3B%20… 4/7
Zelfportret met twee cirkels (1665-1669), Kenwood House, Londen
Dankzij historische documenten weten we dat Rembrandt in die laatste twintig jaar van zijn leven te
maken had met fikse tegenslagen. In 1642 was zijn vrouw Saskia van Uylenburgh overleden en bleef de
kunstenaar alleen achter met zijn eenjarige zoon Titus. In datzelfde jaar had Rembrandt de Nachtwacht
afgeleverd, zijn meest ambitieuze schilderij tot dan toe, daarna stokte zijn productie. Tien jaar lang kwam
er nauwelijks iets uit zijn handen. „Nu zouden we dat een burn-out noemen”, zegt Weber.
Onwettig kindIntussen moest Rembrandt wel de hypotheek aflossen van het immense pand aan de Jodenbreestraat in
Amsterdam, het huidige Rembrandthuis, dat hij in 1639 voor het astronomische bedrag van 13.000
gulden had gekocht. Maar opdrachtgevers waren dun gezaaid in de jaren vijftig. Door de Eerste Engelse
Zeeoorlog (1652-54) liep de Nederlandse economie een flinke dreun op. Dat Rembrandt intussen een
onwettig kind had verwekt bij zijn huishoudster Hendrickje Stoffels, deed zijn reputatie geen goed.
Stoffels werd door de kerkraad aangeklaagd wegens hoererij. En Rembrandt raakte als ‘de kunstenaar
met de losse zeden’ bij opdrachtgevers uit de gratie. Desondanks bleef hij zelf gretig kunst verzamelen. In
1656 werd hij bankroet verklaard en in 1658 werd zijn inboedel per opbod verkocht. Met Titus en
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Hendrickje verhuisde Rembrandt naar een klein huurhuis aan de Rozengracht.
Het getuigt van Rembrandts lef dat hij juist in deze tijd van economische malaise besloot om zich niet te
confirmeren aan de smaak van zijn opdrachtgevers. Halverwege de zeventiende eeuw, was de gladde,
elegante stijl van Anthony van Dyck in de mode en de gepolijste, Franse portretkunst. Maar Rembrandt
keek liever naar de Venetiaanse meester Titiaan, die in zijn late periode veel losser was gaan werken.
Titiaan schilderde in vlekken, die van een afstandje samen een voorstelling vormden, maar die van dichtbij
heel vrij en experimenteel oogden. Ook Rembrandt veranderde in zijn laatste jaren – vanaf circa 1651 –
radicaal van stijl. Zijn kwaststreken werden vrijer en breder, de klodders verf steeds vetter. Hij was
waarschijnlijk de eerste schilder die een paletmes gebruikte. „Het lijkt alsof de verf erop gesmeerd is met
een metselaarstroffel”, schreef Arnold Houbraken smalend over deze late werken, in zijn biografie van
Rembrandt die in 1718 verscheen.
Zijn oorlel bestaat uit een paar
toefjes rood en zijn snor uit een kras
met de achterkant van het penseel.
Hoe revolutionair Rembrandts nieuwe manier van werken was, is goed te zien in de zaal met het thema
‘experimentele techniek’. Hier hangt het imposante Zelfportret met twee cirkels (1665-1669) uit de
collectie van Kenwood House in Londen. Van veraf zie je een schilder met een palet en kwasten in de
hand, maar wanneer je een paar passen naar voren zet, ontdek je dat Rembrandts hand niet meer is dan
een vage bruine vlek. Zijn witte muts bestaat uit twee vegen roomwit, zijn oorlel uit een paar toefjes rood
en zijn snor uit een kras met de achterkant van het penseel. Op het gezicht na, is dit zelfportret in feite één
grote waas. Het is een van de intrigerendste doeken uit Rembrandts oeuvre. Zou het schilderij wellicht
nog niet af zijn en is het daarom zo onuitgewerkt? Of keek Rembrandt juist hoever hij met zijn
experimenten kon gaan? En wat betekenen die twee halve cirkels op de achtergrond? Zijn het
wereldbollen, kabbalistische tekens, of was het misschien een meesterproef waarmee Rembrandt wilde
laten zien hoe feilloos hij uit de losse hand een cirkel tekenen kon? Is dit werk niet gewoon één grote
uiting van bravoure?
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Ook in het schilderij dat tegenover het zelfportret met de cirkels hangt, de adembenemende Lucretia uit
het Minneapolis Institute of Art, heeft Rembrandt al zijn schilderkunstige foefjes uit de kast gehaald. De
mouwen van haar gele mantel lijken wel stukken boomschors, zo ruw is het reliëf van de verf. De witte
zijde van haar jurk bestaat uit korsterige vegen – en toch is het zijde.
Bevangen door schaamteMaar meer nog dan een technisch experiment is dit schilderij een hartverscheurend beeld van een meisje
dat bevangen is door schaamte. Lucretia was een Romeinse heldin die zichzelf van het leven beroofde
nadat ze was verkracht. Rembrandt schilderde haar twee keer, maar deze versie uit 1666 is veruit de
mooiste. De voorstelling toont het moment dat Lucretia haar wanhoopsdaad net heeft uitgevoerd. Tranen
wellen op in haar ogen, en op de plek waar ze zich met een mes in haar buik heeft gestoken, begint het
bloed door haar witte jurk te sijpelen. Er zijn weinig schilders die het moment van sterven zo mooi en zo
ingetogen hebben weergegeven. Het is alsof je de kleur ter plekke uit Lucretia’s gezicht ziet trekken. Ze
zoekt naar houvast en grijpt zich vast aan een koord. Eén tel later en ze zal op de vloer ineenzakken.
Ook naar dit schilderij kun je niet kijken zonder aan Rembrandts persoonlijke tragedies te denken. In het
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gezicht van Lucretia zijn de gelaatstrekken van zijn geliefde Hendrickje te herkennen, die drie jaar eerder
was overleden, vermoedelijk aan de pest. Dit weergaloze schilderij is vooral een eerbetoon aan haar.
Hiermee wilde Rembrandt laten zien dat ze geen hoer was, maar een vrouw om van te houden.
Keer op keer word je op deze tentoonstelling geraakt door die sensitieve, menselijke kant van
Rembrandt. Je ziet die in de tederheid waarmee echtelieden elkaar begluren, in de hand op een borst in
het voor Nederlanders zo bekende schilderij De Joodse Bruid. Maar je ziet het ook in datzelfde gebaar
van een peuter die de borst van haar moeder beroert, op hetFamilieportret (circa 1665) uit
Braunschweig, het enige gezinsportret dat van Rembrandt bekend is. Mensen zijn met elkaar in contact,
ze communiceren met elkaar, er is veel onderlinge genegenheid. Vergelijk dat maar eens met andere
groepsportretten uit de zeventiende eeuw – die zijn zo veel stijver en statiger.
Gebeeldhouwde mouwAlleen al het zien van de combinatie van die twee schilderijen,De Joodse Bruid en het Familieportret, is
een bezoek aan deze tentoonstelling waard. Het schilderij uit Braunschweig is voor het eerst in zeventig
jaar uitgeleend, en de kans is groot dat dit de enige keer is dat de werken ooit nog naast elkaar hangen.
Natuurlijk, je kunt ze bekijken in de fraaie catalogus, waarin veel wordt ingezoomd op de details van de
schilderijen. Maar dan zie je niet hoe het daglicht de mouw streelt van de bruidegom vanDe Joodse
Bruid, die wel gebeeldhouwd lijkt. Alleen wanneer je er met je neus op staat, valt je op dat het kanten
manchet van de moeder op het Familieportret ruw en blokkerig is geschilderd, als het spoor van een
tractor in de verse sneeuw. Dan zie je ook dat de jurk van het middelste kind niet groen is, maar bestaat
uit ongemengde streken geel en blauw die Rembrandt met zijn paletmes uitsmeerde – precies zoals de
Duitse schilder Gerhard Richter hem dat driehonderd jaar later na zou doen.
Alleen hier, staand in het Rijksmuseum, omringd door meer Rembrandts dan je ooit bij elkaar hebt
gezien, ervaar je die sensatie. En besef je dat Rembrandt juist op zijn oude dag zijn tijd ver, ver vooruit
was.
Een versie van dit artikel verscheen op zaterdag 7 februari
2015 in NRC Handelsblad.
Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Media BV,
respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.