Rembrandt or not? - Rembrandt Research Project attempts to authenticate certain works

Art in America, Jan, 1993 by John Gash

Following in the footsteps of the Rembrandt Research Project, the recent traveling Rembrandt exhibition presented a radically revised view of the artist's oeuvre. While this major show appeared at London's National Gallery, the Wallace Collection mounted its own Rembrandt exhibition, also reflecting the revisionist stance of the RRP. Below, a partisan commentary on Rembrandt and a discussion of the ongoing attempt to establish an "authentic" corpus of his works.

The London spring was Rembrandt-colored. And what colors! Not the gravy browns, dull reds and monotonous golds which a quarter of a century of poor color reproductions, and school works masquerading as originals, have conditioned us to expect. Rather, a palette which is by turns subtle and opulent. Visitors to the exhibition "Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop," at the National Gallery from March 26 to May 14, 1992, may have been surprised by the preponderance in several of the pictures' backgrounds of gray-green and gray (as distinct from Caravaggesque brown), especially in works of the 1620s and 1630s. But this is Rembrandt's way of evoking the cool light conditions of the North. (Of course, the browns and blacks which Rembrandt had assimilated via his master, Lastman, and the Utrecht Caravaggists, were always part of the equation, increasingly so in the second half of his career. But even then they tend to be combined with, and muted by, gray-green and raw umber hues.) And few except the aficionado would have anticipated quite the range of local colors, poetically and decoratively woven into costume, landscape and flesh. Their application ranges from barely discernible dabs to richly ornate orchestrations. In addition to the more familiar reds and yellows, Rembrandt clearly had a penchant for greens, blues, mauves and pinks which, either singly or in combination, in shadow or illumination, add their distinctive, often pastel, voice to the scene - punctuating the broader drama of light and shade with silken or gemlike glints.

The exhibition, however, was designed not only to display Rembrandt's artistry, but to focus attention on current scholarly debates regarding the attribution of individual works. Its pedagogic purpose was to distinguish between bona fide Rembrandts and a growing number of paintings, many of them previously claimed for the master, which might more plausibly be given to named pupils. The exercise makes good sense for two reasons. Firstly, Rembrandt had a large studio that saw a considerable turnover of talent through the decades. Secondly, it was an accepted principle of the Dutch workshop system that pupils were trained to produce works in the style of their teacher.

The National Gallery's exhibition of paintings was the main component of a three-pronged extravaganza which had previously been shown, with minor variations, at the Altes Museum, Berlin, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In the two continental venues the paintings had been accompanied by exhibitions devoted to Rembrandt's etchings and drawings. In London the etchings section was exhibited in the Sunley Room of the National Gallery, using prime specimens from the collection of the Print Room at the British Museum. But such is the wealth of the British Museum's holding of Rembrandt drawings, that it was decided to replace the drawings displayed in Berlin and Amsterdam with a substantial selection of its own works, exhibited in the Museum itself under the title "Drawings by Rembrandt and His Circle at the British Museum" (March 26-August 24 August 4). The National Gallery's "Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop" was enhanced by two informative and beautifully illustrated catalogues (available in different language editions), one devoted to the paintings and a second to the drawings and etchings (the etchings also available separately) - while the drawings at the British Museum prompted a further fine publication, by Martin Royalton-Kisch.

The paintings volume, edited by Christopher Brown, Jan Kelch and Pieter van Thiel, is likely to prove the most controversial, for although it is a significant contribution to scholarship, with an illuminating discussion of Rembrandt's technique and a meticulously crafted biographical-cum-sociological reconstruction, it reflects quite closely the radically revisionist stance on attribution of the Amsterdam-based Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), a committee of five experts sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research. Indeed, three of its members (Ernst van de Wetering, Josua Bruyn and Pieter van Thiel) have contributed to the present catalogue. In the three volumes, covering the period 1625-42, which the Project has so far produced of its A Corpuz of Rembrandt Paintings (Amsterdam, 1982, 1986, 1989), it has already "demoted" a large number of paintings, ascribing them to named or unnamed imitators, mainly from within the workshop.

While the opinions of these dedicated researchers should be given due weight, and may even end up by carrying the day, it is worth noting that they have aroused considerable opposition - from Rembrandt specialists, museum curators, and others. Caroline Elam eloquently outlined the main difficulties with their position in an incisive editorial in the May 1992 issue of The Burlington Magazine. For me, their two most conspicuous weaknesses concern the decision-making structure itself, and an apparent rigidity in the assessment of evidence. In the first place, the notion that something as elusive as an attribution can best be ascertain6d by committee is a flawed one. The political and psychological mechanisms of establishing an agreed position are likely to override the fine tuning of information to insight that is integral to the task of connoisseurship. Secondly, their contention that the vast majority of works which are adjudged on technical or stylistic grounds to have emanated from his studio are either completely by Rembrandt or entirely done by one of his pupils/assistants, makes no concession to the time-honored practice of master-pupil collaboration - especially on portraits.