Rembrandt's Self-Portraits

Works Discussed:
Studio copy, Rembrandt with a Gorget, oil on canvas, c. 1629 (Mauritshuis, The Hague)
Self-Portrait at the Age of 34, oil on canvas, 1640 (National Gallery, London)
Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, 1658 (Frick Collection)
Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, c. 1665 (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne)

Speakers: Dr. David Drogin, Dr. Beth Harris

For more videos, see www.smarthistory.org

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Closed Caption:

smooth-talking around self-portraits and
that's it's really only with Rembrandt
that you can say we're going to talk
about the artist friend he's the first
artist that you can really do that with
certainly since portraiture had emerged
as an independent genre painting in the
14 hundreds of artists had made salt
portraits for most of the artists it was
an occasional thing right like Raphael
put himself in the School of Athens
right or even sometimes independent self
portraits but none with the incredible
regularity that Rembrandt did ya think I
like over 60 of them you know and
usually more than one year
yeah he's really sort of taking it as a
kind of project for himself and it
actually makes a lot of sense if we
think about what we know about Rembrandt
and the development of his professional
identity because he was very
self-conscious about performing a
identity from brant the painter
yeah and so he developed his
characteristic remember and style that
it makes sense in his great interest in
his identity that he would also make a
lot of self-portraits as well yeah you
know he has to also sort of deal with
the market and Holland and he's making a
name for himself as a portrait painter
right so we spending a lot of time
thinking about what it means to make a
portrait and a likeness way and how to
go beyond the sort of normal portrait
tradition and then do more with with
painting right face like this so this is
a really early is early one from 1629
he's only about 23 years old and already
we can see his kind of hallmark
characteristic features not only
painting in general but also his
approach to portraiture for instance the
great tourism the bright light that
shines directly on the face with the
rest of the painting seems to dissolve
into the shadows she's like a very broke
character is take to me that kind of
very stark contrast of light and dark
yeah you can see very dramatic very much
influence of carve on Joe and North here
yeah it's like
and immediacy you to it that I think of
is very broken dirty looks like he's
really sort of right there is alive
maybe just about to talk to us and greed
yeah and even in this early paintings
early portrait we can see what's typical
of most of Rembrandt's portraits the
even though there's a kind of economy of
paint and he's not using a lot of tiny
details he still communicates the
identity and the personality of the
sitter for himself in a very engaging
way when I really seems to leap out at
you my life like very very lifelike
again also in terms of general
characteristics is a rather painterly
application of the paint
although it is very very early stage in
his career it's not as exaggerated
single can be there shortly
yeah that's right that's ok next one
here's another one from a little bit
later
this is from 1640 and reverence 34 I i
like this portrait because it always
looks to me like a very middle-aged kind
of portrait to me
yeah you know he's in it looks to me
like he's established himself as a
portrait painter amsterdam he's
successful he's got students he's making
monies commissions he's amassing an art
collection is buying a house you know
taking a white he's doing the things
that one does is one gets into one
thirties and it also looks to me like he
went out with all his money and bought
himself some really nice clothes
well we know that he loved dressing
people up and so whether it's
interesting himself or other people that
come to his portrait studio the idea of
getting dressed up and posing for a
portrait is something that appeals to
him even in terms of the active posing
itself
yeah something else to recognize here in
terms of your saying that he's showing
himself being successful as an artist is
the way that this pose and even the
outfit to a certain extent recalls
Renaissance self-portraits like people
by Titian expectation rather or Raphael
he's inserting himself into a great line
major artists from the past yeah and I
think that even though
there's a sense of confidence that comes
from suppose and the luxury of the
clothing that is varying if you look at
the face on his eyes there's something
kind of vulnerable something very
self-aware there about sort of capturing
without as he moves through time for
from his youth towards middle-aged
toward his old age there's a sense of
poignancy there that i think that's
that's always there with Rembrandt
self-portrait
that's right so let's look at a little
later one this is a portrait from 1658
Rembrandt is 52 years old
this painting is that the frick Museum
in New York City and again we can talk
about the same kinds of things
it shows him with this great attention
to light and shadow and how the light
falling mostly on the face and the hands
brings the figure out of the dark
background with use of 10 prisms that
figures started coming apart a little
bit now
yes repeat this much fun you can see
already that his approach has a much
looser rougher application of paint and
this painting is interesting for a
couple of other reasons to this painting
is pretty unique among his self
portraits and all self-portraits
practice in fact he's completely front
we hardly ever see that pose in any
portraits
exactly usually most people in portraits
are represented even if their faces
looking frontally their body is turned
Johnson court applies the only people
who are ever represented completely
frontally usually our Kings Dukes other
people the very top of the hierarchy and
combined with the robe that he's wearing
and the chair and he's sitting and yeah
and stick these holdings sort of feels
almost like reads almost like a scepter
like exactly what hall
exactly it's clear that Rembrandt it's
not just an accident that he looks like
a king he's representing himself here as
king dressed up and one some of the
outfits that he kept in his studio in
this chair and holding what looks like a
scepter he is the king but he
specifically i think the king of
painting because that scepter that he's
holding is not set this at all
think about what a king would actually
hold it wouldn't be a little stick like
that so
Rembrandt here's the king of painting
because the stick that he's holding is
not what a king would actually accepting
our
it's a tool that artists use when
standing in the easel and painting it's
a stick that they hold in usually the
left hand and then they rest their right
hand on it so that their arm doesn't get
tired as its up in the air
lean it against the canvas right exactly
so that's really steady to something
study to rest their arm on while they're
painting and so that stick that is
holding its its receptor but it's a
painting tool and that really helps us
understand that specifically the king of
painting and also if you look at that
how that hand is represented it's gonna
be so much about painting I mean it
almost barely looks like hand it doesn't
even really look like flesh you could
say that a little bit about his face but
especially that hand it seems to you the
other one that seems to be flesh
dissolving into painted like you said if
we compared to the other hand the
difference is very noticeable now
there's a couple of reasons why it might
be painted so differently from the other
hand we have to remember that this is a
self-portrait not a portrait and so
normally if it were a portrait of
someone else the hand there that's
holding that stick would be that
person's left hand because they would be
turned facing you
but since it's a self-portrait remember
that Rembrandt is looking into a mirror
and so that is actually his right hand
especially the hand that he's in the act
of painting with that's the hand by hand
spread portray it as not getting so
that's one reason why it might be more
blurry and more loosely painted in the
other hand though you can also get more
theoretical because that right hand as
the painting hand is the hand associated
most with the medium with the art of
making painting and so perhaps the
painterly quality that idea as I said a
flush becoming paint here is almost
symbolic in a way that member and is so
engaged with painting as the king of
painting after so many years as a
successful painter that's as if he
himself is turning into paint
imagine a career of painting for you
know what 40 or 50 years of painting
just about every day and enjoy being
much more engaged in the making of paint
right then any artist today would be
what it is true that toward the end of
his life and brian has an amazing
facility with it so that he can brush it
on in the most in the loosest way and it
really so quickly represents what he
wants it to represent and it's a really
an amazing thing
it is an amazing thing and i think the
the way that ham stands out as so
painterly literally being paint i think
really drives that message home and you
know he's in his fifties about 52 any
paint this he's starting slowly to get
towards the mature ages of his life and
his later years and as people didn't
even live this line exactly it's pretty
old for the time and so it's interesting
to see how he gets even older how this
transition from flesh into paint becomes
even more dramatic and maybe the
starkest example is this very very
ashamed of yourself portrait this is
from 1669 actually the diet that he dies
and here you can see literally that I
mean it's as if there is no more flesh
he has become all paint space is
dissolving into pigment into the paint
as if it's squeezed directly out of the
two because we would do it and that the
the physical person has been subsumed
into painting comments like he's a ghost
or a spec exactly because ask so
overcome by the material of his
profession one way to think of this also
is that maybe it's a reference to a
classical antiquity in a story from the
antique that the painters oopsis was in
his old age painting a portrait of a
very old woman and laughing and that was
actually how he died and so maybe this
very late painting that Rembrandt is
making himself laughing like this is a
reference to that greatest features from
classical into waiting