Rembrandt’s legacy

Rembrandt is renowned for his outstanding ability to render the human figure and its emotions. He also was unusually gifted as an artist; the way in which he handled his pen or chalk, the etching needle, or the brush betrays a great sensitivity and spontaneity, and the resulting works convey a sense of freedom and creativity. Rembrandt thought about and experimented with purely pictorial matters—the possibilities of composition; the role of tone and colour in the creation of pictorial space, light, shadow, and reflection; and how to vary the properties of his paint to obtain specific effects—with sharp intelligence and originality.

Another aspect of Rembrandt’s genius is the acute and loving attention with which he observed the world around him. In his renderings of women and children and of animals and landscapes, he showed a strong understanding of the significant detail, but he noted these impressions with extraordinary freedom and economy. This dual quality made him exemplary for later artists and, in some ways, one of the first “modern” artists.

Rembrandt was an innovator in technique in all three of his media. From his early, colourful history paintings to his glowing late works, it is clear that he was an artist continuously in search of new stylistic modes of expression and that he belongs to that small category of artists whose development never ceased. Rembrandt’s evolution culminated in his remarkable late style, usually considered to be the summit of his art. In this sense, he may be compared with painters such as Titian and Goya or composers such as Beethoven and Verdi.

Research and attribution

Paradoxically, Rembrandt’s continually changing style, which seems so personal, was faithfully imitated by his pupils in each of its phases. This accorded with the common workshop practice of his time. However, since so many young artists wished to be trained in Rembrandt’s workshop, this training practice—in which his pupils produced marketable paintings and etchings in Rembrandt’s style—subsequently caused much confusion (still unresolved) over the authenticity of many of the works that were traditionally attributed to Rembrandt.

The Rembrandt Research Project extensively researched the authenticity of paintings attributed to Rembrandt. Among those paintings that survived to be investigated, however, many suffered the ravages of time. Some darkened over time, others had been changed in format, and still others had been cleaned and restored too drastically. One thing is certain, however: the number of faked Rembrandts is negligible, because so many school works could easily—often mala fide—be upgraded to “genuine” Rembrandts or were for long unrecognized as school works because of their closeness to a (corrupted) image of Rembrandt’s personal style.

Many of the same attribution problems that apply to Rembrandt’s paintings continued to challenge scholars studying his drawings. Adding to this challenge is the fact that many of his drawings were lost.

Authenticity issues regarding Rembrandt’s etchings also arose, albeit to a lesser degree than with the paintings and drawings. The posthumous impressions from Rembrandt’s copperplates that continued to be printed well into the 19th century and the production of photographically generated facsimiles all caused much confusion. Scholars were aware of about 80 of Rembrandt’s etching plates that had been preserved.

In the past, scholars struggled to find methods that could solve questions concerning attribution and Rembrandt’s artistic practices. This struggle came about in part because very few of Rembrandt’s works are so conclusively documented that there can be no doubt as to their authenticity. Consequently, the foundation on which to reconstruct his oeuvre is very narrow. At the same time, written statements by Rembrandt on artistically and biographically relevant issues are extremely rare. Only a few (business) letters from his own hand have survived, and they rarely bear on artistic matters. Because of this scarcity of contemporary evidence, scholars long felt constrained to speculate on issues of authenticity.

Rembrandt research took a step forward in the later decades of the 20th century, when works by Rembrandt and his school began to be investigated as material objects subject to scientific methods of inquiry. These investigations provided information about the artist’s technique and, indirectly, his ideas on art and teaching. In correlating this information with relevant contemporary treatises on art (especially the book on the art of painting by Rembrandt’s former pupil van Hoogstraten, published in 1678), it was possible to reconstruct aspects of the contemporary art-theoretical background and terminology that would have shaped Rembrandt’s ideas and practices. A great quantity of notary reports and other documents on legal, financial, and family affairs came to light and were still being discovered, and a growing amount of recovered archival material sheds light on early owners of Rembrandt’s works. As a result, Rembrandt studies continued to evolve into the 21st century. The results of such studies will always leave room for new interpretations as historical perspectives continue to change.