Rembrandt's Universe: His Art, His Life, His World

"There are many different methodologies in art history, and one that has become very prominent in historic research in the arts is interrogating the work of art, the material object as a source of historic information. This is especially important in the case of Rembrandt, precisely because he left so few written records about his own life. The work of Van de Wetering has a counterpart in this way to the work of Gary Schwartz. He has also spent a lifetime on Rembrandt. Like Van de Wetering, he’s a mentor of mine in compiling The Young Rembrandt, although he approaches his subject from an entirely different starting point. Schwartz—born American, married a Dutch wife and has lived in Holland for more than 50 years—is really looking at the documents of the historical record to understand the context for the creation of Rembrandt’s work, the social and economic surroundings that helped to make these material objects, the paintings and works on paper, a reality. You might say that it’s the opposite of what Wetering does. Both were important in writing my own book. It’s actually quite funny to have them as influences, because these two learned gentlemen—both very, very important figures in Holland as well in art history generally—agreed to lend a hand in my work without knowing the other was involved. I was naïve in asking them together, because I didn’t realise the degree of professional rivalry between them. They both kept pointing me in the direction of new ways of looking at the material—often in opposite directions! But in the end it worked out fabulously. Their contrasting or even opposite approaches in fact were very complementary for the work I was doing. I’m really grateful to both for their work, the way they are, and the way the gallantly helped me writing my own book. In reading Van de Wetering’s book, you can almost feel the canvas in your hands. You are confronted with these objects, these wondrous artefacts. You can smell the paint. Whereas Schwartz’s book delves deeply into the elect intellectual, literary and cultural climate of the day. He is very much embedded in a social historical reading of Rembrandt’s time. It is fascinating for example to see how much time he spends talking about the patrons in Rembrandt’s circle in order to understand how it was that the images originated in the way that they did—right down to the selection of the subject matter and in some cases even the scale of the work, the size and dimensions of the work was in large measure determined by the needs and desires as spelled out to Rembrandt by his patrons. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . When you’re writing about Rembrandt, you have to be a detective. You have to define the details in the context of the artist’s surroundings. Gary Schwartz is a brilliant detective, so smart and erudite. You can really get a sense of the time, his surroundings, the people that Rembrandt spent time with. In this documentary way, you come nearer and nearer to the man at the centre of this historic effort, and yet Rembrandt still remains something of a mystery. He’s an enigma. This comes across so clearly even in looking at some of his self-portraits, which are at once so expressive, and at the same time leave you with so much room for interpretation about the man and his time. So, these are very complementary approaches. Schwartz looks at the conditions of Rembrandt’s life and his surroundings, coming ever closer to the artist. While Van de Wetering looks at the paintings, even turning them around to examine the back side of the panel there, the reverse of the panels, and be studying him in the laboratory gets also closer and closer to the painter. Both approaches are fascinating and wonderful to read about, also because the two historians are very good writers as well. Absolutely. Schwartz isn’t afraid of being critical about his subject, to put it mildly. Reading this book, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would want to be friends with Rembrandt. He’s a bully! Fierce and ambitious. As a biographer, I like that, though. When you write about someone, bringing them to life means showing the dark side of the of the personality, too. I’m glad Rembrandt wasn’t a saint or a lovely angel. “It’s hard to imagine that anyone would want to be friends with Rembrandt” The thing is, we can’t really prove exactly who he really was. What was his character truly like? It’s something we need to surmise from the documents and the facts of the historical record, and then use the imagination. Gary Schwartz’s depiction of Rembrandt is actually quite black. This is not the Rembrandt that I always recognise or identify with in my own work, and so I may take issue with some of what Schwartz argues. Nonetheless, it’s good to be critical of your heroes. And I know for sure that also for Schwartz Rembrandt remains a hero."

"The best remembered aspect of the Dutch Golden Age is the paintings. Although we don’t know how many were painted, the consensus now is that it was a lot. And when I say ‘a lot’, it’s at least a million, possibly several million. Among the hundreds of painters active in the 17th century, there were some very good ones and I think it’s fair to say that Rembrandt was the very best. One of the reasons why it is good to read this book is because it’s a biography of a really interesting, albeit not necessarily very pleasant, individual. There are dozens of books about Rembrandt, hundreds, actually, but Gary Schwartz’s book stands out for me, because it is an attempt to see Rembrandt for the genius that he undoubtedly was, but in the social context in which he operated. For me, as a social and economic historian, what is also interesting is Schwartz’s interest in what you might call the ‘business model’. How does Rembrandt earn an income? What impact does the fact that he loses many of his patrons in the course of his career have on the work that we now have? Rembrandt comes to Amsterdam in the early 1630s. He paints portraits for a living. But painting portraits is not going to make your reputation, even though Anthony van Dyck became a very famous portrait painter. What you really want to be as a painter is an autonomous producer of what is called history painting—scenes from antiquity, proper history, the Bible. Those are the subjects that are going to make you a great reputation. “You could pick up a Rembrandt for very little money in the early 18th century” We know that Rembrandt wanted to be in that upper league because, at some point, he changes his signature from Rembrandt van Rijn to just ‘Rembrandt.’ The signal is, ‘I’m in the same league as Leonardo , Michelangelo, and Raphael.’ Because he was a difficult character, he lost a lot of his Amsterdam clients in the course of his career, and he even went bankrupt. But for painting, this was actually a great bonus, because after that, he had to shut his workshop, move to a smaller house and become the independent artist he always wanted to be and produces works that were, at the time, increasingly controversial. Increasingly he shuns detail, he puts the paints on in thick layers. It’s almost impressionist, the way he works, and people did not like that. They were upset about it because the fashion was for more detail, finer work, and very smooth layers of paint, so that you could hardly see the brushstroke. But in Rembrandt, the brushstrokes are in your face. And, as a result of that, he is not forgotten by any means, but his work goes out of fashion. You could pick up a Rembrandt for very little money in the early 18th century. He only becomes fashionable again in the 19th century. The book gives you a lot of insight into the way Rembrandt worked. It is also one of the very few that has all the accepted Rembrandt originals in colour in the book, which is a sight to see. Most of the other painters did something very different, including several of Rembrandt’s own pupils. They started out imitating the master, but very quickly moved in a different direction. They were in the south, in what is now Belgium. The most common explanation is the emergence of an art market, which had already emerged in the southern Low Countries, so in Flanders and Brabant, as a result of urban wealth. You got these substantial communities where people had money to spend on luxuries. A group of painters emerged, including van der Weyden and van Eyck, the best of whom were producing for courtier audiences, but still operated in urban environments, and also had an urban clientele. Think of van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait in the National Gallery in London . You see that happening in Ghent and Bruges in the 15th century, in Antwerp in the 16th century, and then in Amsterdam, and other towns in Holland in the 17th century. So there were large painter communities, most of whose members have been forgotten because their work was mediocre. But there was also a substantial market for expensive works—and a group of painters supplying that. Because the court was so unimportant, these painters were more experimental and their works innovative. That’s the basic explanation."