RembrandtPainting.net provides images & information about the famous dutch painter

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Rembrandt

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Rembrandt is now thought to be the greatest Dutch painter and also one of the greatest painters of all time. His pre-eminent position is, however, a relatively recent one; eighteenth and nineteenth-century connoisseurs and critics preferred Gerrit Dou and Nicolaes Berchem. The artist's life was relatively uneventful and the all-too-few known facts do little to explain the development of his genius. Born the son of a Leiden mill owner, the young Rembrandt attended the local university in 1620 but in the following year was apprenticed to the now-obscure but then relatively important local artist Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburgh (c. 1571-1639?), with whom he remained for three years. In 1624 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where he was apprenticed to the much more fashionable Pieter Lastman, but he only remained there for a year and then returned to Leiden.

Several of Rembrandt's earliest pictures owe a clear debt to Lastman, for example the Stoning of Stephen which is dated 1624 in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyons. However, it is not Lastman who was the most important formative influence on the young artist but the fact that he shared a studio throughout the latter part of the 1620s in Leiden with Jan Lievens. In fact, they seemed to have derived ideas from one another; Rembrandt did not always lead the way" Rembrandt's debt to Lievens is proved by the Los Angeles Raising of Lazarus (see right a.) which is related to Jan Lievens's picture of the same subject at Brighton. It was not until 1631 that Rembrandt was to receive his first important commission, for the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (see right b.) which is in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. While the picture is obviously a great step forward for Rembrandt, who had mostly concentrated on small panel pictures of religious and mythological subject matter until this time, the painting of anatomy lessons 'was a matter of course at the period. More usually, however, the doctor concerned is shown explaining the different parts of the skeleton. It is quite astonishing how the artist, from the moment that he"made the final and decisive move to Amsterdam in 1632, was to be so successful as a society portraitist and a painter of official commissions. His formal portraits of these years are numerous, good examples being the pair of father and son and mother and daughter in the Wallace Collection, London. Rembrandt's most fruitful relationship was with Constantin Huyghens, who was the secretary to the Stadholder Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Jan Lievens painted Huyghens's portrait which is at present on loan to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and it was through Huyghens that Rembrandt received the commission to paint a Passion series of at least five pictures which were to occupy him at intervals during the 1630s. He was also sufficiently esteemed by the Orange household to receive a commission to paint Amelia von Solms , the Stadholder's wife. This picture has in fact been identified recently; it was formerly thought to represent Rembrandt's sister or his wife Saskia.

Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenborgh in 1634. She was the daughter of a wealthy burgomaster from Leeuwarden in Friesland, and until her untimely death in 1642 she served as a model for a large number of his religious and mythological pictures. She appeared in the guise of Artemisia (see right c.) (Madrid, Prado) and Rembrandt also painted several single portraits of her, as well as the memorable double portrait of The Artist with Saskia on his Knee (see right d.) (Dresden, Gemaldegalerie).