Rembrandt: ‘the first heretic of painting’?

Associated media

What can we learn about Rembrandt from his pupils?

Albert Godycki reports from a new show in Paris

Despite the accolades accorded to Rembrandt, he was not without his critics. Already in 1681, only 12 years after the artist’s death, the poet Andries Pels considered him ‘the first heretic of painting’. Rembrandt’s pupil, Samuel van Hoogstraten, complained about the lack of ‘graceful’ and ‘attractive’ figures to copy in the instruction he received from this heretic. Regardless their grain of salt, such statements testify to Rembrandt’s position as something of an aesthetic renegade and a rebellious pedagogue. Where did this predisposition come from and why did Rembrandt cultivate, even teach it?

Perhaps it was the artist’s commercial shrewdness that underscored (some might say undermined) his aesthetic choices. Rembrandt must have perceived that in the speculative art market of 17th-century Holland his efforts would go unnoticed if not for a strong visual identity – a stylistic ‘branding’. While it would be imprecise – and perhaps even shameful – to credit the development of such virtuosity to mere marketing alone, these practical considerations played here a larger role than we are sometimes willing to accept in our romanticized notions of creative genius and bohemian zeal.

In order to maximize profits, Rembrandt took on pupils in his Amsterdam studio not just to impart his wisdom of unattractive forms, but to teach the apprentices to draw and eventually paint in his style. Exactly how well they performed and how (as was usually the case) they came to shed their master’s influence is explored in a petite exhibition at the École national supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris, ‘Rembrandt et son entourage’ (Rembrandt and His Entourage). Among the 46 drawings on view, Rembrandt’s make but a cameo appearance with six; however, through these, we seem to gain more insight about Rembrandt’s virtuosity than we would with a ‘one-man’ take that lacks any comparative material. By focusing on those who copied or emulated Rembrandt or were in the vicinity of his influence, the show proposes to unravel the structure of Rembrandt’s authority in that most intimate form of manual production – draughtsmanship.

On top of having to draw and paint Rembrandt-esque, students usually had to pay for this privilege and it was recommended – by the very same disgruntled Van Hoogstraten nonetheless –  that they continue to emulate their master’s style for five years after leaving his studio. The period of personal silencing was to be understood as an act of resolute belief in the master’s teachings, a period that would lead to perfection in the art of painting and, at least in theory, to the development of a personal style. Compare, for instance, the drawings by Ferdinand Bol or Govert Flinck directly after their apprenticeship in Rembrandt’s studio with those dating from their mature years. Flinck, especially, shifted to more delicate, classical forms that were, however, the result of contemporary fashion rather than of deep exploration of the inner muses. It seems that no matter what these artists learned, the market had always had the last word in what they created.   

But one wonders whether, beyond all this commercial preoccupation, there was any formal logic in Rembrandt’s technique, in his economy of line or in his frugalness of material. Was it more effective not only in view of prospective sales but also in allowing the rendering of form and substance in two dimensions? Rembrandt seems to have preferred the medium of ink and a reed pen with the occasional addition of wash as opposed to the more commonly employed chalks for the execution of his subjects, a preference that lends a more forceful character to the drawing. As a result, his nudes are more blatantly nude, his angels more supernatural and the atmosphere of his landscapes more palpable.

Most of Rembrandt’s drawings cannot properly be called such in the 17th-century sense. For Rembrandt, drawing was primarily the act of recording lived experience or else it was the repository for an active imagination. This places him in contrast to other artists of his day, for whom drawing was the material initiation to a painting. Nor can we say that his drawings are accurate: the nude’s torso is too long, the angel’s wings seem disproportionately large, the landscape too ambiguous. Yes, he may have compromised realism, anatomical congruency and perspectival precision, but rewards the viewer with striking immediacy of expression and – if you like – subjective credibility. It was this visual logic that Rembrandt imparted to his students.

We witness Rembrandt as teacher in the corrections he made directly on his student’s sheets, as they often requested him to do. While in Rembrandt’s studio in early 1640, Van Hoogstraten (alas, ever the whipping boy) prepared a ‘Beheading of St John the Baptist’ in pen and brown ink. But the stance of St John’s menacing executioner did not seem quite right and had to be adjusted with the application of a white gouache to suggest a more frontal pose, engaging more directly with the viewer and adding depth to the compositional triad of figures. Although Van Hoogstraten was probably imposing his own corrections here on the basis of a print by Rembrandt of the same subject, the now lucid expression of narrative resulting from such minute alterations bespeaks the tutor’s influence. 

Sometimes Rembrandt’s students got it right. Take, for example, the ethereal ‘Dream of Jacob’ by Ferdinand Bol, who has endeavoured to make us see the haziness of this Old Testament vision with adroit control of relatively few lines, strong and weak, fast and slow. Jacob’s slumber is not just expressed through his shut eyes but most of all through the floppiness of his head and right hand emphasized by a push of brown ink around these parts. This is in stark contrast to the figure of the angel, who stands erect with raised hand. Add the faintly contoured cherubim floating above and think what tension this composition creates. As if a by-product, the blank space of the paper between the figures signals the immaterial haze that never had to be drawn. (Did Bol thus allow himself the seemingly accidental gesture of a whimsical line to the right of the angel?)

 Splendid though it may be, Bol’s drawing does not constitute a Rembrandt, for Rembrandt, according to the experts, would rarely pay so much attention to the hands with their individually formed fingers or the anatomically suggested limbs of the cherubim or the cautiously indicated fall of drapery on the angel. Clearly Bol’s drawing lacks the conviction and finesse of Rembrandt’s movements, with which he confidently yet casually leads the brush in ‘Oriental man Standing to the Left in Profile’ where both the figure’s hand and costume are simply calligraphic.

Considering studio practices that encouraged mutual production, the exchange of drawings amongst pupils and the collation of sheets of various authorship within a single album all under Rembrandt’s name, it is hardly surprising to learn that the number of ‘true’ Rembrandts in museums todayis in constant flux. One study reduced the British museum’s tally of his drawings from 106 to 84; another, the Rijksmuseum’s from about 100 to only 60.

Today scholars are left with the tremendous headache of untangling the Rembrandt from the non-Rembrandt, but they are not without means and method. The latter was developed in 1894 by Russian-born German art historian, Woldemar von Seidlitz and remains in use (with modifications) to this day. The means, however, rest in the indispensible ‘good-eye’ of the connoisseur, trained by persistent looking. The exhibition at the École des Beaux-arts draws attention to the rocky road to attribution, highlighting its key voyagers such as Fritz Lugt, Werner Sumowski and Peter Schatborn. An excellent introduction to the formidable task of Rembrandt connoisseurship – a field evermore usurped by scientific examination – was the 2009–10 exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, ‘Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference’.

While the show in Paris falls into the category of museum exhibitions that consolidate Dutch art of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ under the figure of Rembrandt (‘Rembrandt and his School’, ‘Rembrandt and his Age’, ‘Rembrandt and his World’ or, my personal favourite, ‘Rembrandt and Co.’) it does, moreover, have a uniquely poignant dimension. Most of the drawings are installed in slanted glass cases and bathed in a raking, if not too cold, light permitting extraordinarily close inspection of their nimble execution. Here we can contemplate the boundaries and the complexities of Rembrandt’s stylistic influence and debate the effectiveness of his aesthetic choices or those of his entourage.

But a bizarre yet entirely appropriate juxtaposition is that of the room of the exhibition to its venue. The slender ‘Cabinet des dessins Jean Bonna’ with its 46 gems by master and apprentices opens a parallel dialectic with the energetic, graffiti-ridden spaces of an active 21st-century art school. And we can be certain that there are those here who, like Van Hoogstraten, complain about the instruction they receive.