BBC Fine Art Collection 3 of 7 Rembrandt by Himself

The original art is a human desire, depicting life through a variety of ways, but who are the masters of it? The expression means they must be unique individuals, while also embracing life. "Art Collection" by the BBC performs elaborate and time-consuming search through the years, shuttling around the museums, galleries and private collections in the world and visiting around artists friends and family. It is also showing enjoyment through the creation of classics, interspersed with an introduction to the life of the great masters of art from various periods to gain insight into their artistic core.

Rembrandt by Himself


Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) Rembrandt van Rijn has been described as the greatest artist of the Dutch school of the Seventeenth Century. Thoughout his life he obsessively painted a series of self-portraits which now act as a visual autobiography. This film explores some of these self-portraits and shows us that not only do they present a picture of his changing painting technique, but they also capture the essence of the man throughout his life, allowing us to develop a deep familiarity with him, his life and work.

---

Closed Caption:

yeah
yeah
yeah
he of course was his most available
subject
and he's simply using himself in
different ways like a million film
director casting somebody always in that
in different levels
it reminds me a little bit of in the
fairground where they leave a hole and
someone puts their kitchen let's do you
think okay
and I always feel with his heads when
you see them you think ahead that's the
most Lovelace invention what would I do
yeah
Lucien Freud britain's leading portrait
painter has a private preview of the
exhibition of Rembrandt's self-portraits
in the National Gallery in London
that's episode came out of the segment
see wonderful
it's the first time they've been shown
together a unique pictorial
autobiography of over 70 images from his
early years in the 16 twenties in the
dutch provincial town of leiden to his
death in amsterdam in 1669 at the age of
63 observation the way you observed
himself so detached and that's why it's
so strange that their self portraits
it's never here i am again it's here's
another portrait
who is it off well it is me
Rembrandt produce more self portraits
than any artist before him why he did so
remains a mystery
the only Clues we have the images
themselves
ditching was done very beginning of
romance career when he was still living
lighten and was done as part of a group
of these studies of hints
they're not ready self portraits because
what he was doing he was trying to study
different expressions which would be of
use to him when he came to paint
religious pictures
not only did he do heads but sometimes
he put his own head are on to this study
of a bigger a very miserable crying
bigger which is quite clearly not a
portrait but a study of Rembrandt
himself and were quite a number of these
kind of figures the time it was one
fucking polyglot society and am stem and
the bigger than the speeds but very much
part of the amsterdam seen one of the
problems in approaching this whole
subject Rembrandt's self-portraits that
they weren't known as self parts of the
time
artist didn't that the concept was
something that came and very much later
what we call a self-portrait would in
fact have been described at the time
portrait of Rembrandt done by himself
not a self portrait by Rembrandt you
would think that in self-portrait by
definition is authentic
who else could paint the painting of the
image you saw in the mirror
nevertheless there are authenticity
problems with self portraits and this is
a beautiful case in fact the painting to
my left which is in The Hague in the
mouse house was until recently
considered to be the original the
embodiment of remnants early style as a
painter started very finely and
developed to a more crude manner and
this painting which was known was in the
reserves in turn back and was considered
to be a copy now it looks rather heavy
it's not a very attractive painting at
first view and so this situation lasted
until the german artist Orion said I
think this is the original also because
of the x-ray I see that the paint has
made changes while working at cetera and
I think this is a copy
he was first not believed but this
painting was investigated been formally
and they found something which they
hadn't found ever with in early remember
the front found an under drawing with
infrared reflect ography and the
underdrawing did not look at all
Rembrandt dish
it was a rather weak kind of drawing of
the kind
somebody who's preparing himself to make
a copy could have been making and once
the doubts were cast everybody we all
start to see think is the original and
this is the copy and there is the idea
that this painting is done by probably
remans first pupil here Dow and it would
be a good chance that he made a copy to
train in painting technique
now this painting is not what you would
call a portrait of RAM them down by
himself
it is rather a face with a specific
meaning because there is to the left of
the have this long lock which was called
the love lock which was actually only
used by quarters and no wonder the
painting soon was called Prince Rupert
work
I think that Rembrandt was the first
artist to depict himself in the self
portraits with the berry and it had a
immense impact on later generations of
painters what he did to use were well
fabrics to see how to light falls on
just the edge over here and we know he
had fabrics in his studio
not not costumes but fabrics one of the
fascinating things about particularly
earlier work is that he drops himself
into the subjects
there's one example here in the
exhibition in early history peace who
know adults going on
so I'm completely impenetrable subject
zooming from Roman history and certainly
in the back you see Rembrandt peering in
his 22 here obviously using himself as
the field in which to experiment about
light and shade and right at the
beginning I think that extraordinary
trick that run hows about how shade can
be used to engage the viewer
I think it's really the couch awards
portraiture that amazing capacity to
conceal but make you feel that you could
you could find it out
even you look more closely and already
here were terrific be eager to find out
what's going on in the eyes but the
other self portraits I suppose with with
everyone including young camera in the
sense that young Cameron always liked to
experiment I did to a Technicolor
I did all the wrong things deliberately
to see how far you would go and with him
he painted to access to see just just
how it all worked out that early picture
of the artisan studio is revealing in
the sense that the shadows from the
easel a quite sharply defined which
anorthite would not be so sharp which
accentuates the fact that my personal
belief was that
remember was able to black out sections
of the high window to emphasize another
very highlight this is the North light
effect which is a highlight and soft but
powerful and he was able to make it very
dramatic but by his use obviously in
pastel painting made a big difference to
be used to build out the structural part
with with the with his masterly painting
but usually was a cross light which made
a triangle on the side of the face
but then when when he wanted to make it
to a bit less dramatic and more
flattering
he would have a soft light on the face
which is more frontal more pleasing and
sort of lighting that sees me much
better definitely although i probably
need much more diffusion on the lens but
that doesn't matter but we the cameraman
usually has to watch very carefully this
for light goes too high and a cross
light
if we go back to a cross light again
when you have a cross light on the face
and particularly the woman
if this part here is a bit pronounced
and some actresses it's more pronounced
and others then this is a very damaging
light so the Cameron has to avoid that
at all costs
Marlene Dietrich example she was
brilliant cameraman in her own right i
mean she worked with Josef von Sternberg
and he taught her a lot about
photography and she was to have a
full-length mirror by the side of the
camera and she say Harry the the
colliders could be a bit stronger and
the backlight stronger and the the
lights a little too hot you know she
would tell Harry my cameraman I was his
assistant and he would say to meet God
damage is always right you know
I was working on the catalog of the
Rembrandt prince and I was sitting there
and suddenly date someone standing in
front of me and looked up got the most
terrible shock because there seemed to
be the image of Rembrandt himself
it was in fact Charles Laughton
his face is so much and identify with
that of Rembrandt that I had a kind of
up idea that I was seeing a vision
standing in front of me
nobody show
good morning master room
morning in 1631 he decides to move to
Amsterdam panel and probably the main
recently did say was he was commissioned
to paint the anatomy lesson dr. top that
famous painting in the Americas us
and the time he must have had a sense
that he wanted to present
amsterdam with a formal image of himself
this is a serious budget is quite
elegant much more elegant anything we
see before and it is they can swear
portrait and this was how Rembrandt
wanted him self propelled himself to the
citizens of amsterdam and if we remember
he's moving from a small investor town
very much provincial society to an
extremely sophisticated cosmopolitan
center and one can see this is his
calling cart
mmmm then already was famous he his fame
was early and it may well be that there
was a marked or let's say that there
were people who were interested to have
his image and that such a painting was
made to give as a present or sell to an
art lover who admired his work
Absalom was a town but at the same time
also a village and people were on the
street all the time
if you have lived in allowed for that
you know that you know all the faces and
when somebody is outstanding for one
professional or another
people start to tell stories about and
i'm sure they recognized as that painter
has that famous young people everybody
Rembrandt becomes one of the most
successful artists in Northern Europe
winning lucrative public and private
commissions
however you brought his I picture of
Enoch come on it's going slightly yeah
in 16 party fall he marries saskia the
daughter of a wealthy burger and shortly
afterwards they appear together
he paints himself as the particle son in
the good days jolly days of the prodigal
son when he drinks and wantons with
Sasuke on his knee and there is
Rembrandt enjoying the good things of
life and again a very ambiguous liam is
he is he saying this is what
at my age ought to be doing or is he
making any kind of moral . who knows
there's the very remarkable portrait
where he puts his self-portrait in at
the foot of the cross as the cross is
being raised so that he is one of people
actually crucifying Christ which must be
more than just use himself as a model is
clearly some kind of engagement with the
subject in the story in 1639 Rembrandt
have become an extremely successful
artists are there was a feeling in this
edge portrait that he was trying to turn
away from what had been form
mummy suppose he was trying to escape
the kind of treadmill of successful
portraiture and pinch many more
religious subjects and other subjects
which is a more particular interest to
him
very serious look very kind of
performing look quite unlike that ran
face young man who arrived in Amsterdam
eight years earlier this print
certainly marks a definite new image
that the artist want to protect himself
and he returned to this particular
arrangement in a painting the very next
year
I think what we're seeing here is
Rembrandt realization that he is an
artist on a European scale
he's putting himself into the great
tradition amsterdam and it was a very
flourishing art market and he had seen a
great many Italian Renaissance great
pictures in particular you'd seen the
portrait was talk to the PO terios
competition and that the clear think
he's trying to do here is paint himself
in a sense as though he were painting
sort by Titian
I'm the equal of the Italians and I will
sign myself like an Italian just
petition does on the powerpoint and i
use my Christian name
we're used to the artists from Italy
being Leonardo or raffle Christian names
we're not used to the artist of the
north in the Christian name is very near
his house but Rembrandt signing with his
Christian name is making the statement
that he is one of the Great's of the
italian sword but characteristically
because we're not using the brightness
of color petition used that will full
choice in front of the Browns the cheap
colors the earth making great painting
out of base materials which i think is a
deliberate decision to insist that this
is alchemy skill art and only the art is
what's making it happen in the name of
their large ships
I request you to unveil rembrandt von
Ryan's masterpiece
Rembrandt's prestigious commissioned to
paint the 16 civic Guardsmen of the
Night Watch is unveiled in 1642 to a
mixed response to that clinic in the
same year
Rembrandt's beloved wife saskia dies
leaving him with Titus the only one of
their four children to survive we know
of course that there were problems in
the family
he had an affair with a nurse and she
tries to get to marry her and he tried
to get rid of her and that there were
problems but also artistically there
were problems remnant had gone in to
appeal the suck in which the strong
lighting which you the night work had
suction effect that it affected the
colors that affected the the amount of
detail you could show in the painting
and it could well be that this was a an
incubation time of a reconsideration of
his own art
in the meantime he made the most
beautiful landscape drawings and we know
he must be walking through the landscape
this activity was in an in-between
activity and then after that he started
full swing
they're painting again and and
yeah
yeah
the artist is at work
he's looking up from his page and see if
we have just caught him at work now we
have a feeling that record which is to
kind of peel away all the kind of the
max intellectual pretensions of the
self-portrait leaning on a sealed and
present himself as it really is the
artist who is at work
while there is a newfound confidence in
Rembrandt's painting he runs into
financial problems as a result of
speculation and borrowing he has to sell
off his personal collections of art and
antiques know what most americans own
work they won't say anything
there's a room in sketch of antique
sculptor in 1656 remember went bankrupt
the idea springs to mind that he shows
himself as a big man
although he is a bankrupt man and the
idea that there is it that is a sort of
an answer to his poor conditions at that
moment I don't think this is true
the feeling of one's own identity was
very different from ours
and I think we tend to project these
modern feelings on 17th century
paintings and on remand self portraits
in fact I couldn't care less about the
narrative line you know with the
sociology of the psychology the picture
of much more interested in in the
experience that the painter has
orchestrated for me through the
distribution of color dirt on that flat
surface there is this kind of warts and
all approach
he certainly hasn't glorify himself or
the doesn't seem to be great deal of
vanity working and it's a similar
attitude that I haven't been in my own
work that that a face in some ways as a
kind of road map of the experience that
the subject has had
Rembrandt worked from a mirror and he
was always available and i work from
photographs but i have photographed
myself and inordinate number of times
since I've been paralyzed them and
confined to a wheelchair
I've had a lot of people read a lot of
things into the painting including that
significantly different emotional
content or stylistic changes which i
believe would have occurred
anyway
I return to my own image
I guess because it's the sort of common
denominator between everything I've
tried to do in my work I returned to get
organized
so you watch my hair disappearance of my
beardie crack
but i think that every artist ends up
turning to his own image first to see
that you're not doing something to
somebody else that you're not doing to
yourself
it's a way to measure what changes have
taken place as a kind of constant and
finally we're probably narcissistic and
self-involved and what's more
interesting than
us
well I think he mellowed and warm to his
own image and and some ways seems to
present himself in a much more
straightforward flat foot away as he got
older I you know I prefer them
certainly but i keep loving a look here
you sitting looking at the painting out
and there's a great hand and make
certain that's a great hand there's some
great passages of paint and some sort of
clumsy passages of pain seems so odd to
me that that the approach would be so
different
well it's one of the great noses - I'm
going to love the highlights on the nose
and the 13 quality of it in the the way
his upper lip seems to be stretched
around it
the teeth the greatness of his five
o'clock shadow on his cheeks sort of a
richard nixon quality too
Rembrandt face a little brown syrup over
everything
it's funny that he didn't really put the
brown syrup over his face
my first impression
Rembrandt if I saw him as a physician
with that this was an almond 80 perhaps
even more than 90 years old because not
only of the number of wrinkles and the
deadness of the wrinkles by the
distribution of the wrinkles
I was actually surprised when I realized
that he was only 53 years old
in essence this was my first discovery
because now I have a responsibility I
had to explain what was happening to
remember and he was my patient
I discovered nine blushes on brands face
and each one is different
in fact he uses a different branches
strokes to portray each one of them is
very detailed
for example there one close to his mouth
on the left side of his cheek
here is a marooned . that he highlighted
with a little bit of rocker color
it's very evident of volition that we
call it popular lishon typical of
disease we called Rocio
this recession and this version is
typical and in patients from of Northern
European by ground with very fair skin
and you see it everywhere really when I
go in the streets and see patients with
this but one of the most i guess
contemporary examples is the president
of the United States mr. Clinton and
what you can see the brushes appear and
disappear
you know with his life with the chalk
surface of his work
following the history of the country in
spite of the signs of premature aging
Rembrandt was to survive another 10
years in 1663 his companion and rigor
star falls dies followed five years
later by his only son Titus in these
final years
Rembrandt produces what many consider to
be his finest self-portraits
what's wonderful about
this particular portrait and all these
late self-portraits is the way he makes
the paint stand for the physical
material of his face and the way he
tortures the paint to stand for the part
mark skin and that the red porous nose
and the little scar or deformity he has
on his left cheek and the little Tufts
of hair and the beard just under his
lower lip
that the x-ray shows us that he changed
some details of the pictures he went
along and most notably at the bottom
right in the final painting you can see
he's got his hands class together
but in the x-ray his hands a little bit
higher and they're active actually doing
something
and what they're doing is holding a
paintbrush and I think you can see the
the long streak of the paintbrush
so he's showing himself in the act of
painting
clearly the reason here for suppressing
this particular detail is so that our
gaze is not distracted down here but is
always focus back on this extraordinary
self-examination
what's going on up here
I don't think anybody knows what's going
on in this portrait at all
one of the things that is thought it
might be about is a reference to the zoo
axis the the great Greek painter of
antiquity and there's a legend that
luksus as an old man decided to paint
the ugliest woman who could find and
then she died laughing
and was that may be what's going on here
if thats it will fit in with a certain
view the ground has I think about using
simple things playing things not
beautiful things to make great art and
that story might have appealed to him
whatever is going on it is an
extraordinarily knowing image as he
looks actually out at us and the
question becomes whether he expected us
to understand what was going on with the
he thought he was giving a clear message
or whether in fact the t's as we try to
work out just what this old man still
finds to laugh about
as a painter he must have known that he
was a great painter in his heart I mean
I don't think it was any kind of
humility towards the end he knew it
this particular one is somewhat more
enigmatic
I don't know how you how you would
describe the expression may be a little
wary
he'd been in battle scarred i would say
this is a little bit worried maybe it's
sad but resolved
there's a resolution there is there and
he was raised face sort of what he saw
obviously it was a relief to him to
paint regardless of what other people to
think I mean he painted for himself and
all his self portraits but he was a
relief for him not to have to satisfy
the the the the wishes of his clients
who wanted to look beautiful and rather
like with the cinematography when I was
on african queen and i was introduced to
humphrey bogart and he said listen
cardiff to see these lines and wrinkles
he said it's taken me a good many years
to develop these he said I don't want
you to like me
make me look like a goddamn pretty kitty
said I want to see these lines and
wrinkles
I said we're bogey I'd i agree i think
it is good i said i must say that i had
problems with other acts as i said but
you got me beat this too much to portray
there so i cant doing about it anyway
you know we had a laugh and and this is
the case of ramen time he's got all his
all this sadness and a bit of debauchery
- I to think it's so here he's not
afraid to show it
for me this is one of the best pictures
ever been painted
now i'm just so aware of the beauty of
the way it's painted it's completely
I'm extraordinarily
so perfect and so right and do you know
something convinces one completely you
never question it
I just think what an absolutely
marvelous picture and the way it's
painted and the other thing
yes and so and I think being moved by
something makes one in way on analytical
you don't question it you just you just
marvel at it and that your question how
could it be so good but you didn't
question how it came about at all
and the thing
yeah
yeah
yeah
each of the South Florida's was a time
and began created in front of the mirror
he really studied his face time and
again you see the wrinkles change slowly
you really can see him age because of
this concentration on reality
what we take the essential aspects of
Rembrandt for me are really the touch
color
and rooted in that
experience that he is orchestrated for
us with your is the road taken not just
where he got
I think he would have been a wonderful
absolutely wonderful
actually what
yeah
yeah
brand has done with his incredible
genius the best portrayed ever produce
there's no Barry document
I mean no letter no birth certificate
not received / code files are going to
tell us who work from brand
this is from brand
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah