Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–69) was an artist of extraordinary talent and vision – a brilliant observer, storyteller and innovator. While most seventeenth-century Dutch artists specialised in one particular genre, Rembrandt explored a wide range of subjects, including self-portraits and portraits, biblical motifs, landscapes, nudes and scenes of everyday life. All of these themes are explored in Rembrandt: True to Life, which follows the evolution of Rembrandt’s work over four decades, from the dramatic Baroque style of his early years to the contemplative and introspective later works.

Rembrandt was the first artist to fully explore the possibilities of etching, producing 314 prints over the course of his career. In this exhibition, more than 100 etchings reveal the inventive ways in which Rembrandt approached his subject matter – his unique re-imagining of biblical themes, his unorthodox style, and the development of psychological complexity in narrative scenes and portraits.

Rembrandt: True to Life showcases the National Gallery of Victoria’s rich holdings of prints by Rembrandt, alongside key paintings from the NGV Collection and important loans from European and North American museums.

All works, unless otherwise noted, are by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn was born in Leiden in 1606. His parents had a malt mill near the river Rhine (Rijn), and the family home was located opposite the mill. Rembrandt was one of ten children, seven of whom survived into adulthood. He was sent to a Latin school, where his subjects would have included rhetoric, history and Bible studies. From the age of around fifteen he studied drawing and painting with Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburg, before going to Amsterdam to be apprenticed to Pieter Lastman, a history painter who had travelled to Italy and was influenced by Venetian and Roman art.

After he returned to Leiden in 1625, Rembrandt set up a studio alongside fellow artist Jan Lievens. The secretary to the Prince of Orange in The Hague, Constantijn Huygens, came to visit both artists in their studio in 1628 and praised their extraordinary talent. Describing the figure of the repenting Judas in Rembrandt’s painting Judas returning the thirty pieces of silver, Huygens wrote that, to his astonishment, ‘a youth, a Dutchman, a beardless miller, could put so much in one human figure and depict it all. … All honor to thee, Rembrandt!’.

Printmaking was an integral part of Rembrandt’s work, equal in importance to his painting and drawing. He started making prints as a young man in Leiden in the mid 1620s, and completed 314 etchings by the time of his death in Amsterdam in 1669. In the process, he redefined the possibilities of the medium, and established new creative and technical standards that have inspired generations of artists.

Although etching had been used since the early sixteenth century, very few artists utilised the inherent freedom it allowed, emulating instead the highly systematic linear vocabulary of traditional engraving.

In engraving the lines of the design are cut by hand into a copper plate with a sharp tool known as a burin, while in etching they are created by the chemical action of acid ‘biting’ into the plate. The artist first draws the design with a pointed needle onto a plate prepared with a protective wax ground. The plate is then immersed in acid, and the metal exposed by the strokes of the needle are etched by the acid to produce grooves that hold the ink when the plate is printed.

It was Rembrandt who, with his instinct for the inherent potential of diverse mediums, approached etching with unprecedented freedom, thereby establishing a new pictorial language for printmaking.

Between 1631 and 1632 Rembrandt relocated from Leiden to Amsterdam, a thriving metropolis and the centre of art production and trade. He moved into the house of the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh and worked as the head of his studio. Over the next three years, he received numerous portrait commissions, established his network and learnt about marketing art.

In Rembrandt’s time, the great majority of commissions were either civic or private. Royal patronage was not extensive in the Netherlands, nor were commissions from the Church, because churches in the Protestant north did not require images of saints and elaborate altarpieces. Many works that were produced at this time were made to be sold on the open market. Burghers of the Dutch Republic liked to decorate their houses with paintings and prints depicting biblical motifs, landscapes, scenes of everyday life and ‘tronies’ (character types).

Tronies were made as studies for figures in historical and biblical compositions, and as autonomous works. Rembrandt frequently dressed his sitters (and himself) in exotic or historicising dress with accessories including plumed berets, turbans and jewellery. Because tronies were not portraits of individuals, the artist had the freedom to invent a role for the sitter, and to study facial expressions and the effects of light and shade.

In 1639, when Rembrandt was at the height of his success, he bought an imposing house on Sint Antoniesbreestraat for the vast sum of 13,000 guilders. The home he shared with Saskia also accommodated the artist’s studio, a workshop for his apprentices, an art dealership where he sold his works and those of other artists, and a ‘Cabinet of curiosities’. Rembrandt was a keen collector of prints and drawings. Art historical traditions were very important to him, and he borrowed figures, poses and compositions from works by his predecessors and contemporaries.

In his Self-portrait leaning on a stone sill from 1639, Rembrandt appears self-confidently flamboyant, with long hair and a manicured gentleman’s moustache. He turns towards the viewer with his arm resting on a stone sill, a pose adopted from portraits by Titian, Raphael and Albrecht Dürer. The Renaissance costume takes him out of the context of his contemporaries and positions him in line with his artistic ancestors. In this way, he presents himself as a successful artist who is claiming his place not only in Amsterdam society, but in the history of art.

The study of the nude figure was an essential part of artistic training. Nudes were drawn from sculptures and, increasingly, also from life models. Rembrandt placed primary importance on working naer het leven (from life). He sketched from models and organised drawing classes for his students from the mid 1640s. His approach focused attention on capturing lifelike poses and gestures, light, colour and texture, rather than concentrating on clear outlines and perfect Classical proportions.

Rembrandt was familiar with art theoretical debates and publications, such as Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boek (The Book on Painting), published in 1604. He also owned a copy of Albrecht Dürer’s Treatise on Human Proportion (1525) and studied Italian Renaissance art through his vast collection of prints and drawings – all of these references informed his images of nudes. As with his landscape etchings, which are combinations of various sketches made ‘on the spot’, Rembrandt’s nudes are carefully constructed composites of art historical references, observations from life, memory and the imagination.

Landscapes played an increasingly active role in the narrative of Rembrandt’s paintings and etchings from the 1630s, and he started composing independent landscape images in the early 1640s. Only a few of these were executed as paintings, and almost thirty as etchings. The prints depict rustic cottages, farmsteads and riverbanks set against distant views of the city. Although many of the locations can be identified, these landscapes were not intended as topographical records. Rather, they are composed of separately observed motifs and views taken from different angles.

Rembrandt’s ability to capture the transitory qualities of light and air is unprecedented in the medium of etching – some landscapes convey the atmosphere of a warm summer’s afternoon, while others represent the sun breaking through passing storm clouds. The landscapes are populated by small figures working in the fields, leisurely strolling in the countryside, or rowing in boats on the river. Included in this group of prints are images of Saint Jerome and Saint Francis depicted as hermits in Italianate landscapes. These were inspired by Venetian prints in Rembrandt’s art collection.

From the mid 1630s, Rembrandt focused his attention on ‘history painting’, which encompassed biblical, mythological and historical motifs. This was the most highly regarded artistic genre, because such paintings required artists to demonstrate their mastery of figures, landscape, architecture, perspective, light, colour, expressive gesture, mood and emotional impact.

Rembrandt’s aim was to convey the ‘most natural motion and emotion’, as he explained in a letter to the diplomat Constantijn Huygens in 1639. In his etchings Rembrandt was equally ambitious. On a small scale and in a monochrome medium, he created dramatic narratives that express the emotions of each protagonist.

This room presents a wide range of subjects from the Old and New Testaments, which show Rembrandt’s extraordinary skill as a storyteller. The selection presents the evolution of his printmaking, from Baroque drama to quiet contemplative images, with techniques ranging from light, linear compositions made in the manner of drawings, to densely worked surfaces that produce deep blacks. In his religious works, which include his largest and best known prints, Rembrandt took the process of etching further than any artist before him, creating images that rival paintings in their complexity and impact.

The hundred guilder print is one of Rembrandt’s most complex, highly worked and acclaimed etchings. It combines several episodes from chapter nineteen in the Gospel of St Matthew, bringing together a diverse group of people who gather around Christ, including the rich and the poor, the young and old. Several years in the making, the work is an unprecedented achievement in the medium of etching, both in composition and technique.

The diverse figures in the left foreground, and the group of Pharisees debating, are drawn in contour lines, whereas the sick men and women approaching Christ from the right are rendered in soft dark tones, and the figures and animals on the far right recede into darkness under a looming stone building. Rembrandt achieves this effect through very fine cross-hatching, which rivals painting in its tonal range and nuances. This is the culmination of the artist’s longstanding fascination with light and shade, which he explored in print and paint. The rich chiaroscuro effect is heightened by the warm tone of the Japanese paper. In 1649 an impression of the print was sold for the exorbitant sum of 100 guilders, the price of an expensive painting, giving the etching its nickname.

In many of his prints, particularly in the later works, Rembrandt made changes to the copper plate to produce different ‘states’. These changes typically include the addition of details and textures that would accentuate particular elements, or change the mood by darkening the image.

Rembrandt’s largest prints – Christ presented to the people: oblong plate and Christ crucified between the two thieves: ‘The three crosses’ – were completely reworked. The prints were made entirely in drypoint, a technique in which the grooves that hold the ink are flattened relatively quickly and the image deteriorates after around fifty prints. Rembrandt did not see the limited life span of these copper plates as a conclusion, but an opportunity for complete renewal: he erased large sections of the plates and added new elements that give the later states a completely different emphasis and mood.

In addition to changing states, Rembrandt often added ‘plate tone’ by selectively wiping the plate, leaving a thin film of ink that would add tone to the image. From the mid 1640s imported Chinese and Japanese papers were available in Amsterdam, and Rembrandt used these for his ‘deluxe’ impressions. He sometimes also printed on vellum (animal skin).

As Rembrandt never travelled outside the Netherlands, he brought the world of art into his home. Pictorial traditions were of great importance to him, and through his collection of prints and drawings he could survey the work of the Old Masters. Rembrandt constantly drew on his art collection as a starting point for his own compositions, and used it extensively in his teaching. As his student Samuel van Hoogstraten wrote, prints were the ‘messengers and interpreters, telling us the content of works of art which are either far away or already old’.

Rembrandt’s passion for collecting also extended to artefacts and natural objects from various parts of Europe, Turkey, the Middle East and Asia, which were assembled in his ‘Kunst Caemer’, translated as ‘Art chamber’ or ‘Cabinet of curiosities’. The collection was a product of Rembrandt’s intellectual curiosity, but it was also a status symbol that presented him as a connoisseur who had the knowledge to appreciate these rare objects, and the ability to acquire them.

A room in his house was dedicated to the display of objects, including animals, shells, corals, textiles, Chinese porcelain, Indian Mughal miniatures, helmets and weaponry, glassware, busts of Greek philosophers and Roman emperors, musical instruments and books. Some of these served as props or as inspiration for his portraits and biblical images. This small re-creation of Rembrandt’s collection is based on a 1656 inventory of his possessions.

Explore this re-creation of Rembrandt’s collection, based on a 1656 inventory of his possessions.

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Rembrandt established his reputation in Amsterdam as a portrait painter in the early 1630s when he worked in the studio of Hendrick Uylenburgh. While portraits were a lucrative source of income, they were not as highly regarded as narrative history paintings. The reason was that the artist was not considered to have much autonomy in rendering the likeness of his sitters. However, Rembrandt imbued his portraits with liveliness and psychological complexity. He conveys a sense of the sitter’s inner world, and often makes reference to their interests or profession in the chosen settings.

While the application of paint in Rembrandt’s late portraits are free and expressive, his etchings are more subtle in composition and technique. Etched portraits were usually commissioned to be given to the family, friends and business associates of the person portrayed. Rembrandt’s clients came from various backgrounds and include several prominent preachers, city officials, artisans and doctors. They reflect the cultural pluralism of the city of Amsterdam in which communities of various religious affiliations could co-exist.

The depiction of scenes from everyday life – or ‘genre’ as the subject matter came to be called in the nineteenth century – is an important theme in the pictorial traditions of northern Europe, particularly in printmaking. From his earliest etchings made in Leiden, Rembrandt took an interest in the depiction of poor people, which were inspired as much by reality as by art historical precedents in the work of Lucas van Leyden, Pieter Breugel and Jacques Callot. In the mid 1630s, when he was living in Amsterdam, Rembrandt etched various genre scenes featuring strolling musicians and street vendors. The small size of the etching plate offered a fitting format for studies of individual figures or intimate scenes of everyday life, many of which were likely made by drawing directly on the plate with the etching needle.

Rembrandt constantly observed women, men, children and animals, and was clearly fascinated by their interactions, as well as quiet moments spent in solitude. He made hundreds of sketches of everyday moments, many of these were listed in the 1656 inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions. They were ordered into albums according to subjects, such as ‘figure sketches’, ‘animals’ and ‘women and children’, which suggests that Rembrandt used them as reference material for his compositions.

In the 1640s Rembrandt invested much time and energy in his large studio operation. He mentored numerous artists, of whom around fifty are known by name, including Govert Flinck, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Ferdinand Bol, Carel Fabritius and Arent de Gelder. His apprentices included fully trained artists who were already practising independently and came to Rembrandt’s workshop to learn his new technique and style.

Many of the works produced in Rembrandt’s workshop were copies and variations of the master’s paintings. The most accomplished ones were offered to buyers who could not afford a painting by Rembrandt, but wanted to own a work made in the fashionable style. If the artist was not established as a master in his own right, his works were sold under Rembrandt’s name, sometimes even bearing his signature. This is one of the reasons why attribution of paintings by Rembrandt, his circle and his followers, is very complex.

This selection of works shows the influence of Rembrandt’s art on his contemporaries, who no doubt also influenced him. While some of his students adopted a more Classical and colourful painting style after their apprenticeship, others, such as Arendt de Gelder, continued to work in the manner of their teacher.