52 Facts About Rembrandt

Rembrandt is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art.

Unlike most Dutch painters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of styles and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological subjects and animal studies.

Rembrandt never went abroad but was considerably influenced by the work of the Italian Old Masters and Dutch and Flemish artists who had studied in Italy.

Rembrandt was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck.

Rembrandt's family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker's daughter.

Rembrandt's mother was Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church.

In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou and Isaac de Jouderville.

Joan Huydecoper is mentioned as the first buyer of a Rembrandt painting in 1628.

In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague.

Rembrandt began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success.

Rembrandt initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, and in 1634, married Hendrick's cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh.

Rembrandt acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.

In 1637, Rembrandt moved upriver to Vlooienburg, in a building on the previous site of the current Stopera.

Rembrandt tried to settle the matter amicably, but to pay her lawyer she pawned the diamond ring he had given her that once belonged to Saskia.

Rembrandt took measures to ensure she stayed in the house of correction for as long as possible.

In early 1649, Rembrandt began a relationship with the 23-year-old Hendrickje Stoffels, who initially been his maid.

In 1654 Rembrandt painted a nude Bathsheba at Her Bath.

Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council.

Creditors began pressing for installments but Rembrandt, facing financial strain, sought a postponement.

Remarkably, Rembrandt was permitted to retain his tools as a means of generating income.

Rembrandt lost the guardianship of his son and thus control over his actions.

Two weeks later, Hendrickje and Titus established a dummy corporation as art dealers, allowing Rembrandt, who had board and lodging, to continue his artistic pursuits.

Rembrandt's life was marked by more than just artistic achievements; he navigated numerous legal and financial challenges, leaving a complex legacy.

Whether this refers to objectives, material, or something else, is not known but critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.

In some of his biblical works, including The Raising of the Cross, Joseph Telling His Dreams, and The Stoning of Saint Stephen, Rembrandt painted himself as a character in the crowd.

Rembrandt was especially praised by his contemporaries for his biblical subjects, for his skill in representing emotions, and attention to detail.

Rembrandt must have realized that if he kept the paint deliberately loose and "paint-like" on some parts of the canvas, the perception of space became much greater.

Lastman's influence on Rembrandt was most prominent during his period in Leiden from 1625 to 1631.

In 1626 Rembrandt produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely account for his international fame.

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and practically abandoned etching.

Rembrandt took easily to etching and, though he learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work.

Rembrandt was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself.

Rembrandt worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.

Rembrandt now used hatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate.

Rembrandt experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum.

Rembrandt began to use "surface tone", leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression.

Rembrandt made more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.

Rembrandt's prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the 27 self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so.

Rembrandt owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of works by other artists.

Rembrandt was influenced by artists including Caravaggio with his chiaroscuro lighting.

Rembrandt was interested in Mughal miniatures, especially around the 1650s.

Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, known as The Night Watch, between 1640 and 1642, and it became his most famous work.

Rembrandt departed from convention on both narrative painting and portraits, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal.

Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonne of his paintings.

Rembrandt's authorship had been questioned by at least one scholar, Alfred von Wurzbach, at the beginning of the twentieth century but for many decades later most scholars, including the foremost authority writing in English, Julius S Held, agreed that it was indeed by the master.

Those few scholars who still question Rembrandt's authorship feel that the execution is uneven and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.

The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master's command of illumination and modeling.

In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640.

Rembrandt's own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies.

The pigment analyses of some thirty paintings have shown that Rembrandt's palette consisted of the following pigments: lead white, various ochres, Vandyke brown, bone black, charcoal black, lamp black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake and lead-tin-yellow.

The entire array of pigments employed by Rembrandt can be found at ColourLex.

Large collections of Rembrandt's drawings are held in the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, and the British Museum.