The Age Of Rembrandt

This is a study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

The caress of fabrics, the sheen of metal, the brittle luminosity of glass -- Dutch genre painters of the Golden Age were so skilled at mimicking the appearance of things that their largely imaginary domestic scenes are utterly convincing pictures of life as it was once lived. The contemporary viewer enters this world of make-believe as eagerly as Dorothy stepped into the land of Oz, with a complete trust in the fitness and accuracy of the illusion. Now, four eminent art historians reveal the trick behind this illusion and give us insight into the social reality that animates the deception. We learn why domestic interiors were a favorite subject for seventeenth-century Dutch artists and why buyers snatched up these paintings before their varnish dried. And we come to understand why these images of home and family, the earliest in the history of art, still speak to us three hundred years later in a voice as fresh and powerful as when they first appeared. This is the story of an art that echoed and shaped the ideals of an emerging nation -- a sensitive portrait of the painted fictions that laid the ground for our modern concept of "home" as the compass of our true selves. Book jacket.

The Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century was home to one of the greatest flowerings of painting in the history of Western art. Freed from the constraints of royal and church patronage, artists created a rich outpouring of naturalistic portraits, genre scenes and landscapes that circulated through a newly open market to patrons and customers at every level of Dutch society. Their closely observed details of everyday life offer a wealth of information about the possessions, activities and circumstances that distinguished members of social classes, from the nobility to the urban poor. The dazzling array of paintings gathered here - from artists such as Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Gerrit Dou, as well as Rembrandt and Vermeer - illuminated by essays by leading specialists, invite us to explore a vibrant early modern society and its reflection in a golden age of brilliant painting.

A captivating exploration of the little-known story of Rembrandt’s formative years by a prize-winning biographer. Rembrandt van Rijn’s early years are as famously shrouded in mystery as Shakespeare’s, and his life has always been an enigma. How did a miller’s son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist of his age? How in short, did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? Seeking the roots of Rembrandt’s genius, the celebrated Dutch writer Onno Blom immersed himself in Leiden, the city in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent his first twenty-five years. It was a turbulent time, the city having only recently rebelled against the Spanish. There are almost no written records by or about Rembrandt, so Blom tracked down old maps, sought out the Rembrandt family house and mill, and walked the route that Rembrandt would have taken to school. Leiden was a bustling center of intellectual life, and Blom, a native of Leiden himself, brings to life all the places Rembrandt would have known: the university, library, botanical garden, and anatomy theater. He investigated the concerns and tensions of the era: burial rites for plague victims, the renovation of the city in the wake of the Spanish siege, the influx of immigrants to work the cloth trade. And he examined the origins and influences that led to the famous and beloved paintings that marked the beginning of Rembrandt’s celebrated career as the paramount painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Young Rembrandt is a fascinating portrait of the artist and the world that made him. Evocatively told and beautifully illustrated with more than 100 color images, it is a superb biography that captures Rembrandt for a new generation.

Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art celebrates an unprecedented era in the history of art. Drawn from the superb collections of Amsterdam's famed Rijksmuseum, the works of art featured here are a testament to the richness and variety of the paintings, prints, and decorative arts produced in the Netherlands in the 17th century. In a unique approach, Ruud Priem leads the viewer through the highlights of the Golden Age, beginning with the artists themselves and their studios, emerging into busy city streets and the bucolic Dutch countryside, and sampling the variety of 17th-century life and culture. Featured are ninety dazzling works by preeminent Dutch artists--Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Pieter de Hooch, and Jan Steen, among them.

Essays by American and Dutch scholars and museum curators explore the collecting and reception of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in America, from the colonial era through the Gilded Age to today.

Using the artist's self-portraits as a starting point, the author explains how Rembrandt exemplifies the ability to confront life with passion, honesty, and an uncompromising acceptance of who we are.

The prodigious talent of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (ca. 1606–1669), along with his disregard for many of the artistic conventions of his day, astonished, delighted, and dismayed his contemporaries. The full gamut of their reactions is revealed in these three biographies, which were first published in the decades following Rembrandt’s death and appear here in English for the first time in their entirety. These extraordinary documents, by German, Italian, and Dutch authors schooled in the conventions of neoclassicism, provide richly varied accounts of Rembrandt’s impact on the art world of his time. While the authors for the most part acknowledge his brilliance, sometimes grudgingly, they are wary of Rembrandt’s reliance on personal talent rather than on the rules of art. So, too, are they annoyed at his skill in manipulating the art market. Filled with colorful and amusing anecdotes, these critiques, handsomely complemented here with vivid illustrations, bring into sharper focus the originality and psychological acuity that remain Rembrandt’s trademark to this day. An informative introduction by the scholar Charles Ford situates these texts in the art-historical context of the seventeenth century.

In the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, every gentleman of standing had himself eternalized in a portrait. In Holland, these gentlemen were burghers, not aristocrats, or princes of the church. They were prosperous merchants, scholars, generals, and stadholders, seen in official and private settings, alone or in the company of colleagues, or surrounded by their wives and children. Seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture is a remarkable phenomenon: never before had so many portraits been painted. Today, these pictures offer insight into the taste, fashion, occupations, and ambitions of affluent 17th-century individuals. The two great masters of Dutch portraiture, Rembrandt and Frans Hals, are both represented here.