This extensive catalogue accompanied the exhibition on Rembrandt’s pupils organized by Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder in 1992. In his introductory essay Professor Werner Sumowski describes the beauty of Rembrandt’s art and that of his pupils. Paul Huys Janssen shows that the term ‘School of Rembrandt’ does little justice to the excellence of the work of Rembrandt’s pupils.
Rembrandt’s Passion Series is the name given to five paintings of similar size and format executed over a six year time-frame, 1633–39. The works were commissioned by Frederick Hendrick, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the United Provinces, for his gallery at The Hague. Although each of the paintings depicts a traditional scene from the Passion of Christ, they do not form anything like a complete Passion Cycle. Seven years later, Hendrick ordered a further two works of the same size and format of subjects from the Nativity of Christ. Six of the seven paintings now hang in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. As the works were executed between Rembrandt’s well-documented early Leiden period and his rapid rise to prominence as a portraitist in Amsterdam, the works have not attracted the scholarly attention they might, although the commission was undoubtedly the most prestigious of the young Rembrandt’s career. Rembrandt’s Passion Series is the first monograph to focus solely on this important group of paintings by the most famous artist of the Dutch Golden Age. In it, Simon McNamara traces the history of the commission by way of extant documentation, places the works in a seventeenth-century Dutch religious milieu, and shows how the series is both reflective of contemporary theological exegesis and embedded in theoretical artistic debates of the age. The book also highlights the extraordinary nature of the self-images seen in three of the paintings and discusses the legacy of the series in later graphic works by Rembrandt and in paintings by his pupils. In doing so, Rembrandt’s Passion Series presents a series of unifying factors, both stylistically and thematically, for the works that allows the Passion Series to be properly, and finally, called a “series”.
Despite the tremendous number of studies produced annually in the field of Dutch art over the last 30 years or so, and the strong contemporary market for works by Dutch masters of the period as well as the public's ongoing fascination with some of its most beloved painters, until now there has been no comprehensive study assessing the state of research in the field. As the first study of its kind, this book is a useful resource for scholars and advanced students of seventeenth-century Dutch art, and also serves as a springboard for further research. Its 19 chapters, divided into three sections and written by a team of internationally renowned art historians, address a wide variety of topics, ranging from those that might be considered "traditional" to others that have only drawn scholarly attention comparatively recently.
De Witt offers a detailed biography based on a thorough review of the documentary evidence. He traces Van Noordt's origins back to a prominent musical family, details his artistic development under the guidance of prominent Amsterdam painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer, and reveals his synthesis of the styles of the two dominant Netherlandish artists, Rubens and Rembrandt. Using a systematic analysis of technique, manner, and approach to form, de Witt proves that over half the paintings and drawings presently attributed to Van Noordt are not his work - virtually recasting the accomplishments of an artist whose vibrant, often daring works challenge our concept of seventeenth-century Dutch art.
An illustrated feast for the eye and intellect Dutch Art explores developments in art, art history, art criticism, and cultural history of the Netherlands from the artists' workshops for the Utrecht Dom in 1475 to the latest movements of the 1990s. it is lavishly illustrated with 147 black-and-white photographs and 16 pages in full color. More than 100 internationally recognized scholars, museum professionals, artists, and art critics contributed signed essays to this monumental work, including historians, sociologists, and literary historians.
Thinking Bodies - Shaping Hands focuses on the critical as well as historical dimension of the handling of the brush and of the resulting appearance of colour on the painted surface in art and art theory from the middle of the 17th (above all from 1660) to the dawn of the 18th century in the Netherlands. More specifically, it deals with Rembrandt’s last pupils such as Arent de Gelder. „Handeling” describes an active, embodied process that is connected to the motion of the hand with the brush or with any other kind of tool. This term, up to now not sufficiently appreciated in scholarly literature, seems to be fruitful in this context. It is not so much connected with the term „style”, as with a prior step, which is equivalent to „manner”. At the same time, its meaning in Dutch till today is „action”. „Handeling” is an act that could be described as a „form-act”. It focuses on Formgestaltung, in which these actions themselves are understood as processes. Examining the „Rembrandtist ideology of painting”, this study attempts to reveal the embodied process of painting in the sense of a bodily articulation during the application of colour. This occurs within the productive tension between theory and practice.
"The book draws on extensive research to revise what has been known about Drost's life, his stylistically diverse oeuvre, and his influences. The artist's training and his relationship to Rembrandt and other artists in the Rembrandt circle are examined, as is his Venetian period and the relation of his style to that of German-born painter Johann Carl Loth. Drost emerges as one of Rembrandt's most talented imitators and, despite his very short career, an artist with a variety of faces."--BOOK JACKET.
