Exhibitions around the world to commemorate the anniversary are celebrating the painter as one of art’s great rebels. But it wasn’t always so.
AMSTERDAM — How did Rembrandt die? Considering that he is one of the most famous names in art history, it might come as a surprise that we don’t know.
He was 63 at the time, but scholars say there is no record of any illness. The poets might say he died of grief, about a year after the death of his only surviving son, Titus.
Although Rembrandt enjoyed worldwide fame in his lifetime, in the end he spent far beyond his means, filed for bankruptcy and was living on a pittance. He was buried in a rented, unmarked grave. Later, his remains were dug up and destroyed, and there is no lasting marker of his resting place.
Let’s take a moment to consider Rembrandt’s death because it took place 350 years ago this year, in 1669. Museums across the globe, from Amsterdam to the Arabian Gulf, are staging exhibitions to commemorate his extraordinary artistic legacy, and a life that was far from a masterpiece.
With all this renewed focus on this painter, etcher, printmaker, draughtsman, lover, fighter, genius and debtor, it’s fair to ask: Who is Rembrandt now? How do we interpret the life and work of the Dutch Golden Age master who knew great fame but also fell out of fashion in his own lifetime, and who has been resurrected again and again by different generations of art lovers who found new meaning in his work?
“Very few people know the story of Rembrandt’s life,” said Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, which is hosting the celebration’s centerpiece exhibition, “All the Rembrandts,” through June 10. The museum’s entire trove of Rembrandt holdings — 22 paintings, 60 drawings and 300 prints — are all on show. The exhibition is accompanied by the release of a new biography by Jonathan Bicker, “Rembrandt: Life of a Rebel.”
“Every generation has its own Rembrandt,” said Gregor J. M. Weber, who leads the department of fine and decorative arts at the Rijksmuseum. “Eighty years ago people loved Rembrandt as the old man of the soul, the lonely man reaching the highest point in art,” he said. “Now we think he’s more or less a rebel, who always invented himself anew, who always changed his way of doing things. He struggled and fought against himself and also against the standards of his time.”
“All the Rembrandts” is not a biographical exhibition on the face of it, but it tracks the artist’s progress from his early career in Leiden, the Netherlands, to his last paintings, made just days before he died. It begins with a single room of 30 self-portraits that allow us to look into the artist’s eyes as he ages from a curly-haired youth of 22 to a graying, concerned-looking 55-year-old. We see how the early sketches and etchings of street beggars, half-naked women and hurdy-gurdy musicians transform later in his career into figures that populate his biblical scenes.
