By Dan Gheno

"Poetry tends to give general truth, while history gives particular facts," said Aristotle in Poetics (400 B.C.). Though written thousands of years before Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669),  Aristotle could easily have been describing the artist’s portrait paintings and etchings.

Rembrandt paid little attention to the surface characteristics of his sitters and emphasized the overall emotional truths he saw within. In fact, later in his career, he became so intransigent that some of his pupils, like Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), sold-out their master by superficially painting their customers in Rembrandt’s style, without his often  unflattering spiritual overtones.

The current Santa Barbara Museum of Art show, "Rembrandt and His Followers," coordinated by Richard Kubiak and Burton Fredericksen, provides us a valuable opportunity to compare these two approaches to art.

Born of a common miller in Holland, a young, quasi - democratic nation,  Rembrandt never catered to conventional norms in his art or physical appearance. The influential historian Filippo Baldinucci said, "The ugly and plebian face with which Rembrandt was ill-favoured, was accompanied by untidy and dirty clothes,  since it was his custom,  when working,  to wipe his brushes on himself and to do other things of a similar nature."

CALM AND CONTROLLED 

Judging from the quality of his prints, we would envision Rembrandt calm and controlled. "St. Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape," the most recent etching in the show, shows a deliberate and contemplative use of the medium.

The foreground is clear — airy in its austerity — with lines that gradually form into a seated, cloaked man. Jerome’s head is detailed, as if in a half-tone, which melts within the shadowed overhanging. Within this shape, sinuously spanning the page, we are reassuringly embraced, only to find our eyes settling upon a menacing lion.

The lion protects St. Jerome from outsiders as much as his pointed profile leads us slowly outward, into the delicate background. As in his paintings and drawings, Rembrandt’s etchings feature subtle gradations, and he punctuates their effectiveness with sparring dark and light accents.

Moving from the gallery containing the Rembrandts to the one with his followers, we immediately notice the gradations and highlights as well as the spirituality is missing.

One brilliant artist, Jan Lievens (1607-74), however, can’t actually be considered a "follower," since he was a contemporary, giving to Rembrandt as much as he received. The two artists even painted on each other’s canvases and were involved in a joint studio effort in their hometown of Leyden. They were also both pupils of Peter Lastman, from whom they learned the conventional and commercially rewarding techniques of the contemporary Italian portraitists who were themselves  derivative of Caravaggio.

In their joint effort, "Oriental Head," Lieven’s original version is restrained, with great linear definition. Rembrandt’s reworking looks denser, richer in its dark tonal quality.

Rembrandt eventually left for the more prosperous port city of Amsterdam, leaving Leivens to his personal whims which got progressively lighter and more buoyant as well as commercial. His "Resurrection of Lazarus" is almost dreamlike with sparse, delicate linework.

PORTRAITS

Rembrandt’s great drawing abilities so endeared him to the merchant boom-town of Amsterdam, he was able to break down some traditional portraiture norms. In his first important assignment, "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp," Rembrandt violated the idea that everyone must be portrayed with equal importance in a group arrangement. The doctors were painted in varying positions, some concentrating on the lesson, others full face while reading, or half-faced while daydreaming.

This led to his masterpiece, "Night Watch," in which many pedestrians, dogs and peasants were featured more prominently than some of the more influential subjects. It’s no wonder that some of the sitters began paying for their privilege in accordance with the importance they received.

At about this time, his middle period, Rembrandt began overstepping his monetary resources. He had all the trappings of a rich man. He acquired quite a dowry when he married into aristocracy, as much out of love perhaps as a need to vindicate his past. He bought a house, took part in ostentatious carousing, and always bid the highest prices at art auctions, all of which eventually led to bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, he flaunted his tawdry image, hiding uncensored realities within his otherwise socially acceptable pictures. In "The Good Samaritan," look for a defecating dog.

SCANDAL!

Even more scandalous was the affair he carried on with the nursemaid of his only son, Titus, after his wife Saskia died. When he decided to get rid of her for a second mistress, a legal battle ensued. Although Rembrandt is idealistically portrayed an innocent victim in all this, he actively sought to have his first mistress incarcerated for a long period after she tried to hock some jewelry he gave her.

The year of all this tribulation, 1659, Rembrandt did little, if any, recorded work.  He lost  many students, a terrible financial loss,  since  students relinquished all commercial claim to their work. It was not uncommon for teachers to sign their names to the work of pupils.

Bankruptcy caused the disbursement of Rembrandt’s large student collection as well as his own paintings and etchings. Opportunistically, many publishers and schools reprinted his etchings carte blanche. Some collectors even replaced his signature with anyone of his more popular students. In fact, Rembrandt even lost the right to peddle his own work, under Holland law, and his mistress had to create a dummy corporation as a legal storefront.

Rembrandt prepared his paintings in the same methodical manner he approached this etching: first with numerous drawings, then an etching and finally a grisaille underpainting. He  encouraged his students to do likewise, and they  often  reproduced his studies, step by step. Such reproductive work, like Joric van Vliet’s copy of Rembrandt’s self-portrait, may seem artless, but many of Rembrandt’s destroyed or damaged paintings are only known from such sources.

UNREHEARSED WORK

He kept these plates small so he could carry them in his pocket and work when the mood suited him. He also did many fast, uncomposed facial and figure studies, which are rare because he didn’t consider them finished works and made few editions.