Rembrandt in America

TibbettsTravel About Us USA International Award Winners Destinations BlogRadio

Sunday, November 6, 2011

By Christine Tibbetts

RALEIGH, North Carolina - My opinion, and yours, are sought in a remarkable exhibition “Rembrandt in America” that opened Oct. 30 in Raleigh at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Blockbuster art collections always teach me, not ask what I might think but this one carefully points out some paintings attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn that just might not have been painted by the Dutch master.

Considered the largest number of authentic Rembrandt paintings from American collections ever before assembled, the exhibition stays in Raleigh until Jan. 22, 2012 and then moves to Cleveland and Minneapolis.

“The show offers a rare opportunity for visitors to follow the evolving opinions of scholars regarding what makes for an authentic painting by Rembrandt,” curator Dennis P. Weller said.

Young Man With a Sword is one of those, purchased by a museum curator and Rembrandt expert in the 1950s but today believed to have been painted by artists in the Rembrandt School.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1659, oil on canvas, 33 1/4 x 26 in., National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.72

Strikes me as remarkably honest and forthright to raise new opinions, especially since this purchasing curator was William Valentiner with the very museum opening the show.

Considered one of the most important painters in the history of European art, Rembrandt is renowned for his uncanny ability to depict light and shadow, to capture the emotions of his sitters and to intimately share historical and religious stories, Weller said.

Forty-six of the 50 paintings from American collections comprising the exhibition are on view in Raleigh, including the self portrait painted in 1659, normally hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

“We can be face-to-face with Rembrandt,” Weller said, “celebrating a genius.” I also pretended to be chatting with the artist in front of his self-portrait titled Study in a Mirror.

Seems Rembrandt painted his family members as often as he painted himself. Many of his pupils did too so now scholars are raising questions as to identities of subjects.

The Family Gallery of the exhibition includes portraits of the artist, his wife Saskia, his son Titus, his common-law wife Hendrickje and perhaps his sister Lysbeth.

She, however, might actually be a servant girl and not the sister. Typical of the exhibition’s interesting focus, side-by-side images of this girl provide observations of painting style.

Rembrandt van Rijn,
Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold-Trimmed Cloak,
1632, oil on panel, 23 7/8 x 17 3/4 in. (oval),
Private collection, New York

Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold-Trimmed Cloak is right next to Bust of a Young Woman. She certainly looked like one and the same to me.

One is still attributed to Rembrandt and the other now to Isaac de Joudreville, painted some time between 1612 and 1648.

Signage is clear, large and simple, raising observations and posing questions. Seems the Rembrandt Research Project is the scholarly source behind much of the new determinations.

Pretty exciting to know I was face-to-face with at least 40-something of them being at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Maybe I’ll follow them to Cleveland Feb. 19-May 28, 2012 and Minneapolis June 24-Sept. 16, 2012.

How might this confusion have happened? Seems there was a golden age of Rembrandt purchasing, sort of a flurry, when the Frick, Mellon, Morgan, Hammer, Simon and Getty families were collecting.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Flora, circa 1654, oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 36 1/8 in.,

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Archer M. Huntington,

in memory of his father, Collis Potter Huntington,

“This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to visualize the choices of collectors regarding what constituted an autograph Rembrandt painting over more than a century,” North Carolina Museum of Art Curator Weller said.

The North Carolina Museum of Art last year opened an exciting new facility with multiple galleries plus courtyards, gardens and a park with trails, art and a theater.

More about that in a detailed look at Raleigh, another story.

Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn,
Young Man with a Sword, circa 1633–1645, oil on canvas, 46 1/2 x 38 in., North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation