Rembrandt exhibit at Cincy museum

By LISA CORNWELL

Rembrandt exhibit at Cincy museum

The three self-portraits portray the artist in his early, middle and late years.

CINCINNATI — A Rembrandt masterpiece on loan from Paris’ Louvre Museum for its first appearance in the United States is the highlight of an exhibition of three self-portraits by the famed Dutch master.

Seventeenth-century artist Rembrandt van Rijn, regarded as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art, painted about 40 portraits of himself and etched about 32 more. The three painted self-portraits featured in the exclusive show that debuted over the weekend at the Cincinnati Art Museum provide a look at the artist as he portrayed himself in his early, middle and late years.

“Rembrandt painted more self-portraits than anyone before him and practically anyone since,” said H. Perry Chapman, a professor in the University of Delaware’s art history department and a specialist in the artist’s self-portraits. “And just from viewing the three in the Cincinnati exhibit, one can see how intensely he studied himself and worked to convey something of his character and the strength of his intellect through his self-portraits.”

The Louvre’s “Self-Portrait at the Easel” from 1660 is especially important because it is the first in which Rembrandt presents himself as a working artist, said Benedict Leca, curator of European painting, sculpture and drawings at the Cincinnati museum.

The painting, acquired by King Louis XIV of France in 1671 and the first Rembrandt to enter a French public collection, shows the artist in his later years before an easel holding paintbrushes and palette, and clad in contemporary work clothes and a simple white cap.

“His late self-portraits are remarkably candid,” said Walter Liedtke, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a specialist in Dutch and Flemish paintings. “They strike you as Rembrandt looking in the mirror and being honest about himself. There’s nothing pretty about them.”

The two other highly regarded self-portraits in the Cincinnati exhibit are different from the later one painted just a few years before Rembrandt’s death in 1669. A costumed Rembrandt appears to be playing a role in both.

The “Self-Portrait With Gorget and Beret” from about 1629, on loan from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, shows the artist as a young man wearing a black beret and a piece of neck armor, his eyes and half of his face in shadow and his mouth slightly open as if he’s surprised, Leca said.

“We can’t be sure what he’s trying to convey, but it’s obvious he is playing with expression and drama,” Leca said. “The early self-portraits were an exercise in mastering the depiction of expressions, a skill used expertly in his paintings of biblical, historical and mythological scenes.”

Rembrandt’s self-portraits from the middle years were essentially about his reputation and his stature as a gentleman in society with fancy clothes, gold chains and a dignified expression and carriage of the body, Liedtke said.

The exhibit’s third self-portrait, on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, was done around 1642-1643. In “Self-Portrait with Beret and Two Gold Chains” a middle-aged Rembrandt dressed in a black hat and a fur-lined coat and wearing two gold chains appears in a costume harking back to Renaissance portrait painting, Leca said.

Rounding out the exhibit, which runs through May 21, are items from the Cincinnati museum’s own collection — five Rembrandt self-portrait prints and three portraits painted in Rembrandt’s style by his students or followers.