When the name Rembrandt comes up in conversation I find that it is not uncommon to hear someone exclaim: “Oh, I love Rembrandt’s drawings!” And if I turned to them and ask what it is that they like about them they will generally answer: “Because they are so wonderful!” If I then ask why they think they are so wonderful that person will look at me as if I were completely ignorant and say: “Well everyone knows he was a great artist.” That kind of commentary tells me nothing about Rembrandt’s drawings but something about the speaker: I strongly suspect he has an acquired opinion; he speaks with conventional wisdom.
From my earliest days I have been suspicious of conventional wisdom and so when I ask these questions, I am not playing the devil’s advocate but seeking enlightenment as to why this artist is so highly regarded by such a large cross section of society. I was a young man new to New York in the 1960’s when the Metropolitan Museum caused a scandal by paying two million dollars for the painting Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. For over fifty years the allure of that painting has eluded my understanding. Nor have I ever been much impressed by the two galleries of Rembrandt portraits in that same museum: there is a look of sameness ad infinitum about them. Yet when I have taken visitors to the city there they too have rhapsodized about the genius of this Dutchman.
I am initiated in Rembrandt’s technique: when I studied set design we were taught his way with pen and ink and wash as a method for making quick sketches that suggested lighting effects and three dimensional forms. We studied his work from books and plates of reproductions. And while I might have seen some of his drawings at the Morgan Library or the Metropolitan Museum over my years in New York, it was not until I was in Boston, in 2006, at the age of 67, and saw an exhibition at the Fogg Art Museum, on the occasion of his 400th birthday, that I was aware of experiencing the thrill of seeing them face to face. And one of the things that impressed me most is that they were so small …some of them only two or three by five or seven inches, about the size of a picture post card, but most of them smaller. In a few quick, joyful lines he captured the world as if in a rain drop.
To qualify that awakening I have to admit that I have a preference for the drawings …they are spontaneous, they express the artist’s enthusiastic response to an immediate stimulus, and they show a mastery of technique: pen and ink is his métier. I am less enamored, however, of the etchings. Granted they contain examples of his masterful draughtsmanship but I have always sensed, regardless of who has made them, that etchings are too fussy, over elaborated, precious, somewhat contrived, and made wholly in a spirit of commercial purpose.
This exhibition at the Frick Collection is the result of an occasion that has presented the opportunity for an extended appreciation. The occasion: the Frick’s Rembrandt Self Portrait, at age 52, has just been cleaned and restored and installed in the place of honor with the museum’s two other Rembrandt paintings in the Oval Gallery. The extended appreciation is an exhibit of 10 of the Frick Collection Rembrandt etchings in a small gallery on the main floor and works from the Lugt Collection in two galleries on the lower level.
While I am not enthusiastic about many of Rembrandt’s portraits, I am fascinated by his self portraits. (He made over 90 of them.) In fact one of my very favorite paintings is his self portrait, at age 23, in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In that work the young artist looks out at us with quiet dignity, a mixture of temerity and self confidence, and a palpable yearning. He is already a master painter and there is not a flaw in the exquisitely executed work. The surface is smooth overall and the intricate detailing is magnificent. The portrait is a bust, down to the bottom of the rib cage and he appears low in the frame; his eyes are exactly at the centerline across the format. Atop his head of frizzled hair is a cap and standing up from that and arching over him is a large feather. Everything about this portrait is aspiration and ambition. As they say; if you’ve got it, flaunt it!
In the Frick portrait, thirty years later, clearly the man has had his life experiences. He is of course older, he is weathered, he is weary, and he is wiser. This painting is almost twice the size of the earlier work and here he sits high in the format with his body represented down to his knees. His arms spread wide from his torso pressing against the sides of the format. He dominates the format, he dominates the room in which the painting hangs, and he is dominant over us and all he surveys. Painted in the shorthand of the late style wherein a slash of color speaks with specificity and eloquence he lets us know that he is bloodied but unbowed and that he is, through the completion of this masterpiece, still very well able to get on with the profession of which he is the sole living master. Yet in all of this there is a very strong sense of the most profound sorrow in the man.
To the left of this painting is his portrait of Nicolaes Ruts. It was painted two years after the Stewart Gardner self portrait and it affords a wonderful opportunity to study the contrast between his early and late styles. To the right of the self portrait is the well known Polish Rider. Like his Aristotle, I have never been favorably disposed toward this painting, in fact, looking at it in this exhibition I began to wonder if there might not be something amiss in the execution of the horse…but who am I to criticize Rembrandt!
Two paintings across the room were once attributed to Rembrandt. However, now, one of them is known to have been painted by a former Rembrandt student, who was obviously very good to have been mistaken for the master for so long, and the other by an unknown artist. After reading the interpretive remarks the museumgoer can observe the details commented on and by comparing these to Rembrandt’s paintings, one can sharpen the eye.
By showing the two collections of works on paper the museum makes it possible for the viewer to compare the character of two collections. As I have said many times in other places, I am fascinated by small art collections and the character of the collectors that these reveal. Through this exhibition I have the additional ability to compare both of these collections to the works I saw at Harvard in 2006.
Apparently all of the Rembrandt works on paper in the Frick Collection are etchings. Ten of them are shown here. (I believe there are only eleven in the collection.) All of these are larger than the Rembrandt drawings made on his walks through the city and countryside and each of them appears to have been made as a commercial entity, a finish art work.
Most of these are very similar to his pen and ink drawings but with a more finished presentation and somewhat lacking in spontaneity. The stand out, for me, is the Landscape with Three Trees, which reminds me very much of the Harry Callahan photograph of three trees in Chicago …not in the composition but in the existential sense of what is expressed by the artist. And I like as well the Landscape With Three Gabled Cottages. It is close in compositional elements to one of his pen and ink drawings but with more fine detail. By contrast, The Goldweigher’s Field completely loses spontaneity and passes into the realm of the purposefully commercially made object.
Of the works with figures, Christ Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print) is the most successful at transcending the medium. There is a lovely range of rich tonal values, there is a delightful fluidity in the flow of the lights and darks, and the whole is made interesting through the wonderful choreography of the many persons suggested in the setting. In fact, this presentation of a setting with dramatic lighting is exactly the kind of thing we were taught to emulate in our classes in set design. By contrast the larger Christ Presented to the People is so static in composition and so lacking in tonal values it looks to have been put on the market unfinished.
Comparing this collection to what I remember having seen at the Fogg, that collection had an overall sense of flowing line, spontaneity, and immediacy whereas the Frick etchings are stately, coolly remote, and conservative…safe. I should probably not compare either of those collections to the Lugt Collection: there are only 66 works displayed and I understand from the exhibition catalogue that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Mr. Lugt was only 14 when he first saw a Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam in 1898. Excluding the self portrait, the other four paintings in the Oval Room were in that exhibition. From that early age Lugt made himself into a connoisseur and expert and eventually catalogued the Dutch and Flemish works on paper at the Louvre, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the Ecole des Beaux Artes. He became an authority on Rembrandt’s life and work and wrote two biographies. He was a life long collector and amassed a body of over 30,000 works on paper, now in the care of the Fondation Custodia in Paris. He had an almost complete set of Rembrandt prints, of which there are approximately 290 known plates, only 80 of which are extant.
It is evident that the works shown from this collection were carefully chosen to represent a well rounded sample of Rembrandt’s work when seen in company with the Frick holdings. The pen and ink drawings include figure studies, landscapes, portraits, and religious legends. The selected etchings are nine self portraits, and one portrait each of his father, mother, and son Titus. The advertised highlight of the collection is the pen and ink with wash; Interior with Saskia in Bed. And while I responded to this very favorably, the highlight for me was the landscape The Grain Mill on the Bulwark.
All of those works are in the larger of the two downstairs galleries and in the back, smaller gallery there is a selection of works of Rembrandt’s students and contemporaries. (During my visit I was amused to notice that all of the visitors were in the larger room with the Rembrandt works: I had the back room to myself! New Yorkers are such snobs!)
The exhibition catalogue is reasonably priced, it contains reproductions of all the works shown, and the information in the essays greatly enhances an understanding of the individual works and the building of the two collections. I would recommend getting and reading it before going uptown. Also: I arrived at the museum somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 AM. I paid and walked into the galleries. The museum was not overly crowded and I had a very wonderful visit. A few days later I spoke to someone who had seen the exhibition and she said that she had arrived sometime after the lunch hour and that she had to wait in line for almost an hour starting a block away from the door. Forewarned is forewarned.
Built in 1914 in a classic revival style the Frick Museum is successful architecture if the visitor digests the exterior; having done that he will find that there are no surprises inside: as promised all is classical restraint, all is elegance defined, in both the interior of the building and in the collection. However, it is exactly the kind of edifice Louis Sullivan meant when he said that Daniel Burnham had set American architecture back fifty years with his classic revival 1892 Chicago Exposition. It is what Frank Lloyd Wright meant when he described revival architecture as a copy of a copy of a copy…a Roman villa is hardly indigenous to New Amsterdam. If the visitor keeps the humor of those observations in mind he can have a pleasant visit: it is a very comfortable space and it is probably the finest art museum in New York City.
Since my last visit four years ago the Frick has done some restoration work in the galleries. I was extremely impressed by the new look in the large, about thirty by eighty feet, West Gallery and especially the new, very deep pile dark emerald green wall to wall carpet on the floor: truly, at the Frick, one walks in the nap of luxury.
http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/rembrandt/index.htm
The self portrait at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum:
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/collection/browse?filter=artist:3151
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