Portrait of the Artist Old Man American Arts Quarterly
Books, arts and civilization
Prospero
Rembrandt: The Late Works
Portrait of the artist as an old homo
The final years of Rembrandt'southward life were hard and humiliating, still his creativity and output were undiminished
AMONG the cracking figures of Western art, Rembrandt van Rijn'due south genius is perhaps the hardest to depict. In Michelangelo'due south work magnificence is self-evident. Titian asks a viewer to luxuriate in the invention of animate human flesh in European painting. From the daring structures of early Cubism to the super-complimentary daubings of his final years, Picasso never left anyone in uncertainty of his radical energy.
Merely Rembrandt, whose late works are the subject field of a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, is more elusive. During the often deplorable and sometimes humiliating years this evidence covers—from 1653 to his death in 1669—his painting became dark and sombre. Its mood was frequently introspective; his brush-strokes were oft impressionistic and his deployment of oil was, deliberately, the opposite of precise.
The 1630s and 1640s saw the Leiden miller's son forging a refined, quite extrovert style of portraiture. He produced studies of biblical stories, whose figures and themes had dramatic immediacy. He became a tireless draughtsman and master printer, pioneering drypoint—drawing, in effect, with an extremely hard needle on a copper plate that would be inked, covered with paper and rolled nether a printing. Such a plate could yield effectually 200 impressions before information technology wore out.
His versatility won Rembrandt lucrative commissions from the burgeoning mercantile class of a new and confident secessionist confederacy: the Dutch Democracy. A united declaration of independence from Espana in the 1580s evolved, ingeniously, into a lavish programme of cocky-enrichment and culture. Wealth began to define Dutch identity. Much fine art of the Dutch Golden Age, which essentially spanned the whole of the 17th century and which Rembrandt dominated by sheer volume of output, enshrined the primacy non of God or monarch, but of coin, belongings and social condition. The republic's citizenry sailed the world and became immensely prosperous. These proto-global businessmen wanted themselves, their families and their houses painted, and to adorn their walls with pictures. It was a skilful time to have a talent with pen and brush.
Rembrandt'south luck was that he was born in 1606 when, for the beginning time in European history, the character and destiny of a country were governed not by religion only past trade. From this shift of emphasis in epitome-making from the divine to the secular also arose the bucolic playfulness of Jan Steen, the earthy faces of Frans Hals, the brilliant carmine brickwork of Pieter de Hooch, the serene interiors of Johannes Vermeer and much of Rembrandt's ain canon. By the mid-1640s Rembrandt was very rich.
But a decade later his life had become hard. He and his wife Saskia had four children, just i of whom, Titus, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642. Overspending forced Rembrandt into bankruptcy and he had to sell his business firm in 1656. He lived in relative poverty and obscurity until his expiry.
Yet his inventiveness and output were undiminished. Great pictures such as "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joan Deyman" (1656) (pictured, right), "Portrait of a Lady with an Ostrich-Plume Fan" (around 1660) and "The Syndics" (around 1662) come from the post-bankruptcy era. All can be seen in a choice of 91 works in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, which will at the very to the lowest degree give a sense of the immense range, also as the loosening style and technique, of Rembrandt's old age.
At the heart of everything were, of class, the self-portraits. Rembrandt painted himself throughout his career. In his late period he worked repeatedly to take hold of varying moods of stress and resignation. One self-portrait (pictured, top), done in the final year of his life, shows a human being who has lived and knows suffering, who gazes at us with some irony, but with delectation too: sadness leavened by the absolute conviction that this painter knows himself and that only he is able to draw the fact.
Information technology is this that makes late, self-reflective Rembrandt elusive. At that place was no commercial imperative to paint himself and questions remain. Why did he do information technology so frequently? What was he trying to find? Some answers will surely lie in this magisterial National Gallery display. At this phase of his career Rembrandt was often painting, from within himself, what it is to be homo.
"Rembrandt: The Late Works" is on at the National Gallery in London until January 18th
Source: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2014/10/17/portrait-of-the-artist-as-an-old-man
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