Poor start, but a great finish
Alastair Sooke is increasingly impressed as he wanders through Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master
Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master, a new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery, begins with a whimper, before – thankfully – erupting with a bang. The whimper is the result of a motley assortment of artworks in the opening gallery, establishing the show’s theme: the first substantial examination of Rembrandt’s reception in Britain, spanning almost four centuries.
A self-portrait once owned by Charles I turns out to be by one of the Dutchman’s pupils. Nearby, four controversial drawings of English views, including two of London dominated by Old St Paul’s, are surely workshop productions, rather than by the master’s hand.
They do, however, raise the tantalising question of whether Rembrandt ever visited Britain: Horace Walpole, the 18th-century connoisseur, recorded a rumour that, in 1661, Rembrandt spent a year in
– of all places – Hull, drawing gentlemen and seafarers. I love this idea, but sadly it remains unsubstantiated.
Elsewhere, a pastel copy of a Rembrandt self-portrait, produced around 1700 by Edward Lutterell, attests to the burgeoning craze in Britain for all things Rembrandtrelated. Its effect, though, is absurd, because the smooth finish feels ridiculously inappropriate for an artist renowned for his rough handling of paint.
Meanwhile, two full-length portraits on loan from Boston featuring Rembrandt’s only “British” sitters, a Dutch minister and his wife who lived in Norwich, are thematically on point, but hardly thrilling works of art. Johannes looks faintly puzzled by the experience of sitting for a portrait; Maria is quietly amused.
The second section, however, occupying the grand central gallery of the Royal Scottish Academy building, is a less piecemeal and pernickety, more rewarding affair.
One of the reasons for mounting this exhibition is that, when it comes to Rembrandt, British collections boast strength in depth – and several of the finest paintings by him in the country have been gathered here.
They include old favourites such as Belshazzar’s Feast, from the National Gallery, in pride of place, and Dulwich Picture Gallery’s sweet Girl at a Window, who looks somehow bigger, and still so lifelike that, supposedly, she used to deceive passers-by when positioned at an actual window facing the street. Revel, for a moment, in the patchwork of colours – rich corals, livid blues, buttery yellows – that summon the convincing contours of her face.
On a strong adjacent wall, we find a compelling half-length portrait of a formidable “oriental” man wearing a white turban (sometimes identified as King Uzziah), as well as a late portrait of an elderly man, from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, in which coarse brushwork seems to provide an analogue for the ageing process – empathetically evoking the bleary mindset of someone whose wits are slowly scrambling.
The latter painting resonates with the popular notion that Rembrandt documented bodily decay with unflinching honesty (witness his stunning self-portrait, from c 1655, elsewhere in the exhibition), and was interested only in psychological truth. But the former picture, from Chatsworth (it was bought by the 3rd Duke of Devonshire in 1742), presents a self-possessed figure with the air of an ageing thespian in costume, wearing upon his chest a breathtaking golden clasp seemingly rendered in 3D. It reminds us that, paradoxically, Rembrandt was also an artist of artifice and make-believe, who loved dressing up
From this moment, the exhibition is tautly organised, so that, as well as containing marvellous pictures, each section has a point. One highlight is the return from Washington of Rembrandt’s dramatically lit The Mill, which encouraged British artists such
‘Rembrandt was also an artist of artifice and make-believe, who loved dressing up’
as Turner to consider the Dutchman’s landscapes, as well as his portraits. There is also a fascinating corner devoted to Joshua Reynolds.
Later rooms examine Rembrandt’s impact upon artists in the 19th- and early-20th-centuries, as well as the mania in Britain for collecting his prints. This inspired all manner of mountebanks, swindlers and unscrupulous dealers to try to dupe the market, as well as a rash of mezzotint reproductions of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, often feeble shadows of the originals.
A coda alludes to Rembrandt’s influence upon modern artists – he is a talisman for School of London painters Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach – but it feels like an afterthought: stronger works are reproduced in the catalogue.
It is tempting to conclude that every age gets the Rembrandt it deserves – but, if true, what does the last painting in the exhibition, by the ironic conceptualist Glenn Brown, say about our own era? In Brown’s smirking appropriation of a (possible) self-portrait by Rembrandt, we come face to face with a ludicrously blueskinned vision of the Dutch artist, with a red clown’s nose. The joke, surely, is on us.