The recently released documentary My Rembrandt focused on the collectors who own works by the famed Dutch master and the enduring pull of his paintings, etchings, and work in other media. Happily, many of the artist’s most celebrated works remain in public collections, and ARTnews reached out to eight international curators at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other institutions to learn about their favorite works by Rembrandt van Rijn. Their selections, which range from the artist’s poignant portraits to his meditations on historical and biblical subjects, follow below.
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Rembrandt, Herman Doomer (1640)
Image Credit: Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art A black hat, a linen ruff, and an intelligently quizzical glance. Out of these simple elements, Rembrandt crafted one of his most captivating portraits, depicting the Amsterdam cabinetmaker Herman Doomer. The sitter rests his elbow in the foreground of the painting, cozily tucking his hand under the cape slung over one shoulder. His face is handsome, but lined and wan. Doomer was one of the gifted artisans who transformed the exotic materials flooding the port of Amsterdam into astonishing works of furniture that might combine ebony, snakewood, mother of pearl, and even dyed bone. Rembrandt practiced a similar alchemy as he rendered flesh and fabric with paint and brush. I like to think of this painting as an encounter between two craftsmen, appraising and ultimately admiring one another. Indeed, Doomer’s son served as Rembrandt’s apprentice around the time his father sat for this portrait. Talent ran in the family.
—Adam Eaker, assistant curator in the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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Rembrandt, Isaac and Rebecca, known as The Jewish Bride (ca. 1665)
Image Credit: Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum’s collection of Rembrandt paintings is the largest and most representative in the world, which makes picking a favorite a daunting task. Fortunately, we have an illustrious example from the past to fall back on, no one less than Vincent van Gogh, who once wrote that he was willing to give up ten years of his life to be able to sit in front of the so-called Jewish Bride for a fortnight with only a crust of dry bread to eat. It was the couple’s tender embrace that so moved van Gogh. Rembrandt maximized the viewer’s participation in this work by putting us in the place of the Philistine King Abimelech, who discovered the true nature of Isaac and Rebecca’s love for one another. The culmination of his experiments in painterly technique, Rembrandt applied the thick paint with a palette knife, molded it like clay, and even scratched its surface while still wet.
—Jonathan Bikker, curator at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Rembrandt, Susanna (1636)
Image Credit: Courtesy Mauritshuis, the Hague The Book of Daniel contains an apocryphal story about Susanna—the beautiful wife of an extremely wealthy man—who was accustomed to bathing in the privacy of her garden. One day two elders hid there in order to spy on her during her bath. They made indecent proposals, but the chaste Susanna ignored them. Out of frustration, the men later accused her of adultery with a young, handsome man, and she was condemned to death. However, divine revelation disclosed the two elders’ deceit, and they—rather than Susanna—were put to death.
Rembrandt painted the moment when Susanna takes fright at her tormentors and tries to cover herself. Painters usually portray Susanna as a gorgeous, perfect woman. But Rembrandt, who wanted nothing to do with the classical ideal of beauty, portrayed her as a woman of flesh and blood. The indentations left by her stockings in the soft skin beneath her knees make a lifelike, everyday impression. Susanna is standing in full light and is subjected not only to the stares of the elders but to our stares, too. The fact that she looks us in the eye invites us to share her emotions, but also makes it even more painful. I think that this is the reason why Rembrandt’s paintings are still so touching and interesting to us: the people and emotions that are central to his paintings are real and universal, and therefore as palpable and relatable today as they were almost four centuries ago.
—Charlotte Rulkens, curator at the Mauritshuis in the Hague, Netherlands
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Rembrandt, The Polish Rider (ca. 1655)
Image Credit: Michael Bodycomb/Courtesy the Frick Collection, New York Rembrandt was fascinated by the “other.” He collected exotic costumes and shells, weapons and antiquities, and objects from a number of other cultures. He copied Indian Mughal miniatures. He was truly interested in the wide world outside of Amsterdam. In this image of a stylish, Polish horseman, he portrays one of the most mysterious and romantic figures of the 17th-century. We do not know who this man is, where he is, where he is coming from, or where he is going. I often feel that this is one of those paintings that encapsulate the human experience in a single image. I look at this canvas every day and I have grown to love it more and more. The way the figure emerges from the shadow. The way he looks at us. I love that this portrait inspired Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke with You.”
—Xavier F. Salomon, deputy director and chief curator at the Frick Collection, New York
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Rembrandt, Six's Bridge (1645)
Image Credit: Courtesy Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam My favorite Rembrandt is the landscape etching traditionally called Six’s Bridge. According to an 18th-century anecdote, Rembrandt made it during a visit to the country estate of his friend Jan Six. It was the result of Rembrandt bragging he could do an etching of the view in the time it took to send a servant to the village for mustard. No doubt this anecdote was prompted by the spontaneity of the work. The composition is carefully thought out, nonetheless. The foreground is occupied by the bridge, slightly elevated, on which two men are in conversation. On the left, two trees serve to balance the sailboat on the right. The meadow beyond is set lower, so that all we see in the distance is a narrow strip of trees. By opting for this abrupt transmission from foreground to distance, combined with the low horizon, Rembrandt has captured the essence of the Dutch polder landscape—quite an achievement using just a few rapid lines.
—Epco Runia, head of collections and education at the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam
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Rembrandt, Artist in His Studio (ca. 1628)
Image Credit: Zoe Oliver Sherman Collection given in memory of Lillie Oliver Poor/© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston In this intimately scaled work accomplished with a limited palette, Rembrandt emphatically makes the case for paintings as products of manual execution and intellectual conception. In passages like the finely grained wood panel floor in the foreground, and the cracked wall near the door at right, Rembrandt demonstrated his technical virtuosity. In subject, Rembrandt poses the artist as thinking—either about what he has painted or what he will paint—so that the act of painting also depends on the faculties of the mind. Together, these features fuse so that the painting stands as an articulate art theoretical statement. That Rembrandt crafted this image when he was in his early 20s before his relocation to Amsterdam, and before his career began its ascent, is even more remarkable. As such, it stands as a testament to Rembrandt’s ambition, even from the earliest phases of his career.
—Christopher D.M. Atkins, director of the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Rembrandt, Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631)
Image Credit: Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection/Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago Rembrandt’s Old Man with a Gold Chain, a character study executed around 1631 as the artist was transitioning from the modest art market in Leiden to the exponentially expanding one in Amsterdam, proclaims the 25-year-old’s ambition with every brushstroke. From the build-up of paint around the eyes that simulates wrinkles to the varying reflections on the steel gorget and golden chain to the decidedly self-assured pose with arm akimbo, the work displays Rembrandt’s accomplishments as an interpreter of the human experience. Here, he announces his competitive potential as a portraitist in Amsterdam through his superb command of anatomy, lighting, and costume. He even added his monogram “RHL” (“Rembrandt, Harmen’s son, of Leiden”) as a final flourish: this self-promoting detail suggests that he was striving for far-reaching fame. Not for nothing, the artist would be praised as one of the most esteemed painters of the century just a few years later.
—Jacquelyn N. Coutré, associate curator of painting and sculpture of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago
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Rembrandt, Self-Portrait (1659)
Image Credit: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection Rembrandt painted, etched, and drew himself some 75 times over the course of his career in images that range from quick, expressive studies to fully worked (and re-worked) self-portraits. In these images, one sees just how carefully—and sometimes playfully—he scrutinized his own visage. Yet, for me, few of these works feel as intimate as his self-portrait at the National Gallery of Art. I am immediately drawn in by his deep-set eyes framed by a flurry of vigorously articulated wrinkles thick with impasto. My eyes linger over the expressive strokes in his face, which are sculptural and yet economical in the way they allow the greenish gray imprimatura layer to peek through and serve as shadows. However, to me, the wonder of this painting is that it seems to invert the natural order of viewing. Rembrandt allows me to see him, yes. But that stare so sharply and profoundly penetrates my gaze that he makes me feel seen, too.
—Alexandra Libby, associate curator of northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.