Rembrandt by Himself (book)

Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn) (July 15, 1606– October 4, 1669) is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history.

This publication maps the many developments in Rembrandt's self-portraiture during his life, and attempts to explain why this genre played such a dominant role in his work. It covers the background to Rembrandt's work and the impact of his style on his contemporaries.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was not a handsome man. He was, however, an exceptional painter of himself. This sumptuous catalogue, published to coincide with the exhibition of his self-portraits at the National Gallery, London and the Mauritshuis in The Hague in 1999-2000, has reproductions of all the paintings and etchings shown, plus copies of lost ones and those not released by galleries or private collectors, thoroughly annotated to elucidate their history. There are essays by scholars including Ernst van de Wetering. The scholarship is impressive, being mostly drawn from the Rembrandt Research Project, which for years has been working with a combination of X-ray technology and patient research to ascertain the age of the pictures and the identity of their painter. This is not as obvious as it sounds; Rembrandt had many pupils, and he encouraged them to copy his own self-portraits as practice, leading to the unusual situation of a host of Rembrandt self-portraits not by Rembrandt.

The findings of the project have been controversial, with paintings unexpectedly relegated or elevated through reappraisal. What shines through, though, is the sheer diversity of Rembrandt's genius, from the early paintings and etchings where he gurns in a mirror to study expression, through the periods of dressing up as variously an oriental potentate, a soldier, an artisan and St Paul, to the famous trilogy of self-portraits painted in his last year which seem to show a man old beyond his years. The catalogue also contains a selection of works by his pupils Gerrit Dou and Samuel van Hoogstraten, and essays by Rembrandt scholars that seek to revise the somewhat Romantic conceit that the series is some sort of spiritual autobiography.