Was Rembrandt reliable? It is worth asking this question because scholars have assumed that Rembrandt was by nature consistent. Otto Benesch, the cataloguer of his drawings claimed that he could recognise the date of Rembrandt’s drawings “to within one or two years, three at most”. If Benesch was right, Rembrandt must have been consistent to a very rare degree. I find him unreliable, I agree with Gary Schwartz “the study of Rembrandt has much to gain from the serious consideration of the negative criticisms voiced by his contemporaries.” and they do not find Rembrandt at all reliable or consistent. Benesch’s error is pure wish-fulfilment that has alas, resounded with his heirs and followers.
By his study of the documents Schwartz brings into question many aspects of Rembrandt’s character that suggest his untrustworthiness. He was struck out of his sister’s will and his wife’s will, he was never asked to be godfather to a child, “he himself sabotaged his career” says Schwartz – I take all that on board. I think you will find below good reason to view Rembrandt’s behaviour as highly erratic.
Supreme self-confidence does not sit well on the shoulders of an artist. Though his confidence in his own judgement contributed to his ability to push art in the direction of truth before conventional beauty; it has earned him everlasting fame for very good reason but it caused no end of trouble in his life-time.
Von Sandrart tells us that Rembrandt “had no understanding of the importance of social rank…. it is certain that had he been able to keep on good terms with everyone and look after his business properly” he would have made a fortune. Baldinucci writes that “not even the foremost monarch on earth could gain an audience” but would be sent away until Rembrandt had finished his work. The Prince of Orange had to wait fourteen years for the last of his Passion series. The painting arrived still wet and the Prince paid only half the asking price. The Sicilian nobleman for whom Rembrandt painted several portraits sent back two complaining that he had bought work from Italy’s most famous painters and never paid so high a price nor received work so ill completed (his portrait of Alexander the Great was sown together from four pieces of canvas).
Rembrandt’s dealings with commoners took a similar pattern. His quarrels with his first mistress and with Saskia’s family after her death show us a man who was deeply lacking in diplomacy to say the least. There are stories of him painting the corpse of his dead monkey into a commissioned family portrait and keeping the painting rather than removing this nasty, unwanted addition. There are constant complaints from his contemporaries such as “he did not finish his paintings properly – it is rare to find in Rembrandt a well painted hand – his female nudes were such pitiful things that they are hardly worth mentioning” etc. Rembrandt answered these criticisms with “a picture is finished when the artist has expressed his intentions in it”. It is this clarity about his intentions and their revolutionary nature that makes Rembrandt such an important example to artists. His female nudes are not idealized as was expected at that time. They were shockingly true to life.
All this evidence needs airing. On occasion I think Schwartz has taken an over-negative view of the evidence. For instance he says of Rembrandt’s relations with his students “the few stories that have found their way into the sources are not heart-warming at all.” He also finds Rembrandt humourless and miserly. Houbraken tells stories which suggests quite the opposite to me: Rembrandt comes upon a scene where his students are eavesdropping on another student and his model locked together in the student’s room. He overhears him say “here we are naked like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” at this point Rembrandt bangs on the door and shouts “Because you are aware of your nakedness you must come out of the garden” and then chased them down the stairs with his stick, I guess as theatre, because “they scarcely had time to dress as they fled”. On other occasions students painted coins on the floor in order to see him stoop to pick them up. This suggests to Schwartz that Rembrandt was over attached to his money. To me It confirms that he had a playful relationship with his students some of whom stayed with him for many years though he charged twice as much for an apprenticeship as his rivals. There are many references to Rembrandt’s generosity in lending objects from his theatrical wardrobe to painters who needed them, in paying over the odds for works by his contemporaries to boost their value and paying extravagantly for works of art generally. When he had money he certainly threw it about. His great house proved much more than he could afford but that was as much bad luck as bad judgement; he lived through a severe recession.
Rembrandt changed the course of art. He seemed so completely immune to criticism that it might help us to understand him better to take these aspects of his character into consideration. If scholars realized they were dealing with a man who exhibits many of the symptoms of Bipolar behaviour, they might treat him more kindly and abandon their efforts to normalize him. They want him to be consistent, he was not; and we cannot understand him unless we take his inconsistencies into account. Some were psychological and some were physical. The difference between Rembrandt’s drawing direct from life and when he relied upon a dim reflection in a polished metal surface, or even worse when he relies on imagination, is very obvious but at present overlooked by the experts. (for examples, see my ebook www.nigelkonstam.com)
These stories and complaints should surely alert us to the fact that Rembrandt, great painter as he is, was not an entirely reasonable human being. As George Bernard Shaw noted – “The reasonable man adapts….All progress depends on the unreasonable man”
I am no psychologist I would like to hear what professionals thinks of this evidence. Rembrandt’s behaviour, his output, his charisma and his supreme self-confidence all seem to me to point to manic-depression.
Prof. Van der Wetering, recently leader of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) enthusiastically told The Guardian (May 24th’14) that the deattribution of “Old Man sitting in an armchair in the National Gallery was “a vast mistake…it is of wonderful quality and revolutionary in a sense…a very important painting”. As one who had written to the RRP in 1988 about this very painting asking if I could come to Amsterdam or preferably invite them to my collection of Rembrandt maquettes with mirrors in Tuscany to dissuade them from this sacrilege, I was all agog. In 1988 they had refused my offer twice; Prof. Van der Wetering was a member then.
What had produced this Pauline conversion? I have just read his article in the June Burlington and have to admit myself somewhat disappointed. The same pointless and misleading art historical nonsense about style, fitting this painting neatly into a pigeonhole for 1652. If you can believe it, one of the reasons for the deattribution in the first place was that the hands of the Old Man do not match.
While the Old Man’s right hand on which he leans is fairly standard, his left hand rests on the arm of a chair, and is painted with a first-time breadth and accuracy that takes ones breath away. I and many painters of my generation regarded it as the holy grail of painting along with “The Wading Woman” (Hendrickje in1654) also in the National Gallery. That hand was so felt, it had that loss of muscle-tone, the bones fell about the chair arm as only such an old hand could do. It could not have been further from an idealized hand by Van Dyck for example. No wonder he was criticized “ it is rare to find in Rembrandt a beautifully painted hand” (Houbraken). This is a masterpiece of observation and empathy.
The X ray (seen in the Burlington) shows that the initial sketch needed but the slightest touches to adjust the top of the hand to balance it perfectly on the knob of the chair. (If Auerbach had achieved such fluency he would be dancing on cloud 9.)
Well, Van der Wetering uses the unmatched hands of the Old Man to compare with the unmatched hands of “The Girl Sitting in a Window” in Stockholm, which happens to have been painted in 1651. Such bathos! Of course her hands do not match. One is tucked so deep under her chin that what we see is her wrist not her hand. The other under her elbow, could well be sited as a badly painted hand by Rembrandt.
I no longer look forward to Van der Wetering’s completion of the RRP’s promised 6 volumes. Nonetheless I salute his courage in changing his mind, thereby undermining confidence in his and the RRP’s work. In fact many years after my initial invitation he came to me with a group of students for a whole day of instruction on the art of drawing and Rembrandt. At the time (perhaps 2008) I thought nothing had penetrated.
Nigel Konstam 24 8 14
May I congratulate Prof.Van der Wetering on recognizing Rembrandt’s prime quality, that of responsiveness, which we see wonderfully displayed in “The Old Man Sitting on a Chair” and which he has finally allowed to be considered “a very important painting” and by Rembrandt.
I have put on my blog www.nigelkonstam.com
a letter I wrote to the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) in 1988 offering to visit them in Amsterdam in order to discuss the damage they were inflicting on our culture, specifically a letter to the Guardian in response to their article “Call to bring Old Man out of the Shadows” 24 May ‘14 ioning “The Old Man Sitting in a Chair”. I was refused once (by Dr. Bruyn) but was not satisfied so got a second refusal “on behalf of all my colleagues” dated March 30th 1988. (Prof. Van der Wetering was a colleague.)
He and his colleagues have been trying to impose consistency on an artist who artists value for his responsiveness: almost the opposite to consistency. The RRP de-attributed this important painting and in so doing may be held partially responsible for the decline of modern, observed painting since.
May we dare hope that Prof Van der Wetering’s U turn marks the beginning of a return to realism in Rembrandt studies. I have ample evidence for the re-attribution of nearly 1000 drawings now distributed among his students. The principles on which I work can be found in my e-book on Rembrandt on the same website or in my article ”Rembrandt’s Use of Models and Mirrors” Burlington Feb. 1977.
Nigel Konstam 4. 7. 14
At 81 my dream of being able to restore Rembrandt to his true status is fading. I have done all I can to inform a new generation of how to go about it in my book and on YouTube. What I have been unable to achieve is the training of fresh minds and eyes to see Rembrandt as I see him. Though I have advertised courses at the Centro d’Arte Verrocchio no one has enroled. However, I feel my ship is coming home and the offer of training still stands.
There have been a number of unacknowledged victories over the years and two major ones just recently: The National Gallery has reinstated their Adoration of the Shepherds, dismissed by the RRP. Second, Van der Wetering, once leader of the RRP has welcomed back the National Gallery’s Old Man Sitting in a Chair as “a very important painting”. I vigorously opposed its deattribution at the time. I feel sure that my YouTube demonstration of “The Adoration” must have convinced someone with clout at the NG. It is still not reattributed by the RRP as far as I know.
I was the first to condemn Isaac Joudeville as a contender to have painted early Rembrandt portraits. Christopher Brown followed my lead and Joudeville has not been heard of since. (Johannes Raven has taken his place with even less to recommend him as a draughtsman.) I also insisted that Rembrandt’s Wallace self-portrait, nasty as it is, was still genuine. All of which are now accepted as true. We are just waiting for the landslide of 1000 Rembrandt drawings to return to the fold. This must happen when the scholars recognize that his contemporaries knew what they were talking about when they said such things as “ he would not attempt a single brush-stroke without a living model before his eyes” (A.Houbraken)
Here is further advice to the new generation
1. Be very skeptical of the old guard in every respect.
2. Try to get the cooperation of Scotland Yard (or similar) to check ink, paper and handwriting. (A list of instances will follow.)
3. Get an artist admirer of Rembrandt to teach you drawing every day till satisfied that you have got the point. Then once a weak, at least.
4. Study my film on Hadrian and the influence of Roman portraiture on Rembrandt and many others.
5. Study my criticism of Raphael.
6. Expect from Rembrandt observations of life as it is, definitely not idealized.
7. Beware of hubris and rigidity. Rembrandt is very varied, perhaps bipolar.
Many of us feel the need to make things. As a sculptor I am something of an addict. I certainly exhibit withdrawal symptoms after a few days without this addiction. It is sad that machinery has speeded and perfected so much hand work that mankind has become very short of these soul soothing activities.
Cookery, music, dance, gardening and art have to stand in for all those useful crafts that we once did but are now done elsewhere or mechanically. Only thirty years ago there were little workshops in every village in Italy making shoes , garments, even hand made cars, most of them have disappeared leaving only the disappointed traces in creative humans with no outlet. This lack of opportunity will have to be addressed as western culture falls apart. Passive entertainment is no substitute.
Art has been recognized as a useful therapy and I am the last to wish to cut off this safety valve. The democratization of art has undoubtedly contributed to the sum total of human happiness. But it has had the negative effect of reducing our expectations from a work of art. It comes as no surprise that the average time spent looking at a work of art is now 20 seconds. I have often spent less time myself. Art has become a private matter. Abstract art does not lead to the sharing of vision in the way observed art used to do.
Artists in their great moments have been the helmsmen guiding human perception; they spend their lives looking and comparing what they make with what they see in nature. But their tentative perceptions have been drowned out by the loud-speakers of a mass-media, entirely subservient to a fashion for art so meaningless that it requires no response or study.
We need an elitist art again based on observation to keep the pathways to perception from being lost. There are very positive signs that the human race is very much less responsive to its own body language than it used to be. The long running demotion of Rembrandt’s vision by the “experts” is an outstanding symptom of this disorder. It could prove fatal to humanity in the long run.
I finally received the answer to my letter to the Getty. (see below) It did not surprise me. I have been receiving such refusal from art historians to discuss since I made my Rembrandt discoveries in 1974. The first was from Christopher White, who was then in charge of Rembrandt’s drawings at the British Museum. (He had written a good book on the etchings.) He did not commit himself in writing but after sitting on my first article for over a month he told his colleague, who had assisted me in composing the article, “that it would be very important if Konstam could prove it.” To a scientific mind it was proven then; as far as is possible to prove anything of this nature.
The Burlington Magazine refused my article until E.H.Gombrich called a governors’ meeting at which it was suggested that he should help me re-write it, which he did. The article was then accepted by Benedict Nicholson the editor, who wrote “I find it of the greatest possible interest and so I am sure will Rembrandt scholars, who must now get down to revising the corpus of drawings.” The appalling revision that has taken place since then has been in the opposite direction to that I proposed.
Pieter Schatborn (recently of the Rijksmuseum) who master-minded the Getty show, translated my second artictle into Dutch. It was printed in Rembrandthuiskroniek (1978) but he has taken no notice of its contents since. I spent an evening with him in his flat taking him through the contents of the book on Rembrandt that I was preparing. He was unable to produce any counter arguments.
My agents informed me that Phaidon had accepted my book “with the whole editorial board behind me” knowing how controversial it was. They only awaited a reader’s report. When it came it was so damning Phaidon dropped the project and ran. On first reading I was shaken myself but on looking into the report I realized it was nothing more than a cunningly concocted swindle. Thirty years later I am still looking for a brave enough publisher.
After a perfectly reasonable exchange of letters with Martin Royalton Kisch, who had succeeded White at the British Museum, he gave me a hefty thumbs down in his catalogue of Rembrandt Drawings (having entirely ‘misread’ my analysis of two drawings of Rembrandt’s first mistress). I countered with three newspapers (The Save Rembrandt Campaigner) and a showing at St Martin’s in the Fields, to try to get my viewpoint heard at the time of the theoretical debate 1991 “Rembrandt and his Workshop”.
The National Gallery (London) actually took the microphone from me (on the orders of Christopher Brown, then keeper of Dutch paintings there) because I asked to show three slides which would have put an end to their novel and destructive viewpoint. The educated public having suffered from the teachings of The Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) since 1969, can probably no longer remember the greater Rembrandt. (The RRP and their followers in the departments of drawings have reduced the accepted Rembrandt works by over 50% because of their misguided ideals in art.)
When I asked The National Gallery for space to present an alternative view at that time I got an almost identical letter as that from the Getty. The BBC has refused to take any further interest after they discovered how my view of Rembrandt upsets the establishment. My view happens to be in complete accord with the known opinion of Rembrandt’s contemporaries. Other publishers and broadcasters have followed suit. For further interest I have scanned similar letters from the RRP and from E.Havercamp Begermann (Yale).
I gave a talk at Harvard in 1978, which fell on deaf ears. I thought the many doctoral students there would go back to their books and see the sense of my view. Alas, many of that large audience will have been teaching the standard guff on Rembrandt ever since. The guff is absurdly complicated, Rembrandt is easy to understand if you get the fundamentals right. Rembrandt was the great sign-post for artists saying observe, observe , observe “anything else was worthless in his eyes”.
This controversy between Rembrandt the observer and Rembrandt the inventor, has been successfully swept under the rug since 1974. Though I have had a few successes at the Wallace Collection and recently The National Gallery where Rembrandt’s “The Adoration of the Shepherds” rejected by RRP has now been replaced as a Rembrandt, where it belongs. (see YouTube for Konstam saying yes it is, and the National Gallery saying no, it isnt.)
It is difficult to escape thinking that art historians perhaps resent the intrusion of an artist into their private kingdom. Art History belongs to artists and the public at large, we need to get it straight. Look at what has happened to painting since the down-grading of Rembrandt. This is our culture in headlong decay!
I have made several similarly important discoveries in the field of art history and archaeology which have been similarly neglected. Best known is the role of life-casting in ancient Greek sculpture, which featured in the film Athens II as well as the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. The full story can be found in the second edition of my book Sculpture, the Art and the Practice.
Copy of Reddit Article
The brain of Man has undergone a transformation since we painted the caves. “In the beginning was the word” the invention of speech was the beginning of that transformation. Speech, number, geometry and mechanics are the chief abstract categories that rule and blinker our perception of the world. They are so useful that they have all but obliterated the rich variety of messages that our animal senses bring us.
It was the chief task of the visual arts to re-examine and extend the interface between the abstract quality of our mindset and the rich variety of the world out there. Traditional artists working from nature and humans soon become aware of how inadequate are our mental images. We know we are burdened with a brain that wants to reduce the world to abstractions. The process of observation brings our abstracting mindset to confront the actual. Each search for understanding
developed by an artist becomes in itself “form”.
The word ‘form’ is generally used to mean three dimensional shape. In art it has another set of meanings. It is also used to mean that which is formalized, or form in the sense of “sonnet form”: a mould into which any number of ideas or feelings can be poured. It can mean manners in the sense of “good form”; manner in the sense of the “Classical manner” which is derived from classical Greek sculpture. It has a structural meaning in the coordination of parts to make a meaningful whole. “Form” can be used to describe a number of conceptual schemes, it is not just meat.
In fact the recognition of form was the chief aim of an education in art. Form is an amalgam of all these ideas and has come to mean that emphasis that comes about from an artist’s interpretation of nature: the aspects the artist particularly wants us to see as important.
Traditional art attempts “to hold a mirror up to nature”. Since the invention of photography this activity has become less rewarding because the camera does this so well. But there is another aspect to the best traditional art which we could describe as the mental digestion of nature; art can be the interface between our habitually abstracting mind and the richness of nature. Art stretches the mind to comprehend more. Around 1904 Art became more conscious of form but recently unconscious.
An art rooted in tradition has the huge advantage of being able to strikes chords in the mind and evoke emotion because of it’s relation to a depth of human experience, recorded and evolving through history. It is our cultural inheritance. The evolution of art is an important part of our appreciation of the visible. As we moved away from the hunter-gatherer, where awareness was all important, we have come to rely on art to keep our senses alive. Without observed art we lose touch with the wealth of what is out there in the world; we receive it less fully, we become less human.
Music and poetry have forms also. In a recent review, a poet was praised for her “impressive formal range… an England rooted in Nature of Chaucer, Shakespeare,Wordsworth and John Clare.” Though I have no ear for poetry I understand what this means because it is similar to visual form, and refers to that cultural inheritance as above.
For instance, in my own experience my love of Rembrandt’s drawings was considerably deepened by visiting a show of Giacometti’s drawings. Giacometti had consciously or unconsciously used space clues similar to Rembrandt’s, his primary focus is on space. Rembrandt, like most draughtsmen, mainly focuses on the solid figures but it is the space between the figures that makes them so meaningful. In my view it is crucial to understand this aspect of Rembrandt’s form. The scholars’ study of style (the mere marks he made) has led the “experts” very far from the Rembrandt recorded by his contemporaries; he has been much diminished by recent scholarship and his philosophy: the primary importance of original observation, has been turned upside down.
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Two main lines of development in the form of western art can be seen. That derived from the Greek sculpture is easily recognised in the lay figure which was present in every academic studio. It is epitomized by the work of Raphael but was generally used during the Italian Renaissance and in academic art since.
The Roman is derived from the survey techniques that Roman sculptors used for transferring their work into the permanent medium of stone. It is based on solid geometry as a pattern to compare with nature. The Roman needs to be distinguished from the Greek because it operates with a different syntax. The Roman is more analytical and therefore better adapted to sharpening observation. Each artist gives the tradition a nudge in the direction of their own personal philosophy. Rembrandt used Roman form when he observed; and Greek on those rare occasions when he had to invent: his flying angels for example.
I have made a short film to explain the high points in the development of form with appropriate images (URL). I regard Rembrandt as the greatest humanist draftsman because he realized that the space between two people expresses as much or more than their individual gestures or facial expressions. He developed the Roman form to incorporate space as well as solid.
My rediscovery that Rembrandt deployed groups of live models so as to find the maximum expression and then drew observing the space with the same attention as the solid bodies is contrary to the modern belief among art historians. They refuse to abandon their mistaken belief that imagination is superior to observation in art. Imagination as commonly understood means drawing out of ones head, often no more than construction by formula. Rembrandt understood that the intimate, meaningful space between two figures cannot be constructed, it is too subtle. It has to be observed. This is the secret of his psychological and dramatic gift.
The teaching of form goes through periods of development and decay. Sadly ours is a period of such decay that many young artists have missed ‘form’ in this special sense in their artistic education. They are deprived of that sense of brotherhood with former artists that sustains and supports a living tradition. As a consequence we are losing contact with nature and with the great tradition of seeing as exemplified by recent Rembrandt scholarship. Art matters!
Note. The word form was crucial to artistic discussion before Wolfflin moved the goal posts with his book “The Principles of Art Hisrtory”(1915). He had no conception of the artistic use of the word form.
I am so pleased to have found this website, so full of mavericks like myself. I am a sculptor, nearly 80 years old. I would like to tell you my experience. I may be one of the last generation to receive a training in the observation of form: that illusive abstraction that can help us to understand what is going on out there in the world.
To see form was the whole point of our education and had been for the previous three millennia. Novelty as such, was not part of our ambition; we hoped to give the world new vision, or at least a new emphasis, by adjusting the tradition in some significant way. I looked to Brancusi and Giacometti as examples in this. Through Giacometti I came to see Rembrandt more clearly. This concept of working within a tradition seems to have been lost.
I was a part of the majority of my fellow students in regarding Rembrandt as the one great master who spoke to us directly: the master of form that expressed the movement of the human spirit in the physical world more clearly than any other. He was also number one on the charts of market-value. How radically things have changed since then. (He no longer appears among the top 30 in the charts.)
Art History was taught by the same bright artists who taught in the studios. We saw art as the interface between nature (the model who stood there all day) and the inadequate abstract quality of our own minds grappling to understand nature. The study of art history seemed to confirm that the high points of civilization were those that came to a new understanding of the visible world. We saw the progress towards that understanding as slow and intermittent. There were long periods of decay interrupted by short bursts of brilliant artistic activity such as the Italian Renaissance. The best periods seemed to go hand in hand with a break-through in scientific thought.
The perspective I gained from my education at Camberwell Art School has lasted a life time. I see myself as adding my own small morsel to the sum total of human understanding of the world. My enthusiasm has not waned but my perspective has divided me from the main-stream of art today.
It seems to me that the ‘art promotion machine’ has multiplied in size and power, due to the recent technological advance of colour television and printing, to a point where the artists themselves are no longer in charge. The machine has taken over! Tom Wolfe complained of the same critic-led art in “The Painted Word”. We have recently seen how over €21 million was paid for a painting whose informal design would hardly have raised an admiring eyebrow if seen on a rug 30 years ago. Art is about values, what will future generations think of ours? Our visual culture has sunk to a level unimaginable, since “The Painted Word”. We need a revolution in the way art is run and art history is taught. Art historians desperately need 80% input from artists.
The art promotion machine is largely manned by those trained in art history, they are aided and abetted by dealers, ad-men and critics. The machine makes a great deal of money, in which only a tiny fraction of working artists take a small share. Over the last decade “The Jackdaw” magazine has been exposing truly amazing abuses in the way public art money is handed out in the UK.
The machine has sold us the idea of the avant-guard. We are invited to view it as the evolutionary “cutting edge” in art. But evolution normally relies on chaotic variety which is then selected by the forces of nature for survival or not. The variety exists in art today but the machine has taken upon itself the selection process and jealously guards the power that it gives. Artists or the public do not get a look in. Most will look at the art that has been promoted over the last 50 years with little enthusiasm. There exists an alternative to establishment art but you will not find it in the media or museums of modern art. The machine will not allow the competition that real evolution requires. The machine rules!
With the help of Sir Ernst Gombrich I published my discovery of Rembrandt’s use of mirrors (Burlington Magazine Feb.1977). If heeded that discovery would simplify Rembrandt studies by demolishing most of the Rembrandt scholarship of the last 100 years. It would make a huge difference to his standing today. Modern scholars believe in only 500 drawings by Rembrandt, Otto Benesch’s Catalogue of 1957 published nearly 1400, I believe there are over 2,000 drawings by Rembrandt extant. This is backed by evidence that would be accepted in scientific circles but it is neglected or refuted by art scholarship. You will find my many criticisms on the internet. Please comment if you visit.
Further examples of the errors of art history are outlined below. For a fuller education come to my Research Centre for the True History of Art at Casole d’Elsa, near Siena, Italy. Courses are offered at The Verrocchio Arts Centre.
The following videos by Nigel Konstam came be found at
http://www.nigelkonstam.com/cms/index.php/youtube-videos-by-nigel-konstam
1. Nigel speaks to the BBC about his Rembrandt discovery in 1976
2. The two versions of “The Adoration of the Shepherds”, are both by Rembrandt
3. An obvious fake praised by Rembrandt scholars
4. Many brilliant Rembrandt drawings falsely attributed to Ferdinand Bol
5. A Canonical Rembrandt drawing of his mistress recently de-attributed
6. Verrocchio’s sense of structure
7. Vermeer’s method with 2 mirror + the camera obscura (3 parts)
8. Brunelleschi’s method of arriving at a scientific perspective
In preparation -
Life Casting and Bronze casting in ancient Greece
The two traditions of form in Europe
STOP PRESS
I have scored a palpable hit recently: I am happy to report that the authorities at The National Gallery (London) have returned their painting of “The Adoration of the Shepherds” to it’s rightful place among the Rembrandts. If you visit the two sites on YouTube dealing with that painting you will find a lady from the National Gallery explaining why their picture is not a Rembrandt and myself (Nigel Konstam) explaining why it must be a Rembrandt.
The bad judgment of art experts is notorious. Their distaste for the work of Van Gogh or Cezanne meant that neither could hope to live by their art. Todays museums of modern art will prove a permanent memorial to the folly of the “experts”. Yet it is not only judgment of contemporary art where they fail; today’s experts on Rembrandt have done equal disservice to art. Their view that he drew from an “inner vision” is at odds with all previous judgments and flatly contradicts the opinion of those who actually knew Rembrandt. Rembrandt and his students drew and painted from tableaux vivant arranged in his studio.
My article – Rembrandt’s Use of Models and Mirrors (Burlington Feb 1977) proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that this was so. I have continued to add to that evidence on www.saveRembrandt.org.uk on YouTube and in my still unpublished book “A New Key to Rembrandt”. The new key is the proof that groups of models were present because Rembrandt also drew their reflections, not once but many times. The reflections were probably seen in a mirror of polished metal as glass of the necessary size came later. The style of the drawings made from reflections is easily recognizable and the subject matter is reversed and seen from a new view-point (unlike print images). This undermines the scholarship of the last 100 years, which has built a fantasy development/dating for Rembrandt’s drawings based on the palpably false assumption that the drawings are derived from imagination. Since my article today’s experts have continued to reduce Rembrandt’s corpus of drawings to 500 where Benesch in 1954 believed in about 1500. They are prepared to de-attribute drawings because they do not fall into their misguided style/date pigeon-holes.
I am pleased to note that The National Gallery (London) has bowed to common sense and reinstated their version of Rembrandt’s painting “The Adoration of the Shepherds” perhaps as a result of my demonstration on YouTube. The painting had been scorned by the Rembrandt Research Project. The fact that the experts in the drawings have not done the same in the 35 years since my article rather points to bad faith as well as bad judgment.