The great graphic artist Saul Steinberg once remarked that drawing is thinking on paper. Rembrandt clearly thought as he drew. His thoughts are far from settled, but rather masterpieces of implication arising from a tumult of scribbles and breakneck brushstrokes, works in which we rarely lose sight of the marks themselves. He encouraged his many pupils to draw and think in the same manner. Encountering the hundreds of surviving Rembrandt and Rembrandt-like drawings is both a visually beguiling and daunting experience. Vast tracts of far-flung scholarship make exploration difficult, and a definitive study seems ungraspable. Each generation has its own authoritative work; then methodologies and opinions change.
Using a refined, labor-intensive, and very un-Rembrandt-like process, a century's worth of scholars have tried to pin him down, and the result is at once humbling and provocative. Otto Benesch's six-volume collection of 1954 comprised more than 1,400 drawings. A half-century of scholarship in reviews, monographs, and catalogues has reduced to them to about 800. In 1994, Peter Schatborn, the Rijksmuseum's retired curator of prints and drawings, posited about seventy “core drawings” — autographed works, or obvious studies for paintings and etchings — as a basis for further attributions. (Gary Schwartz has most recently questioned this small number; see his meticulous, thoughtful essay at http://www.gsah.nl/schwartzlist/?id=148).
The two books under review are surveys, based on this current iteration of his shifting graphic oeuvre. On the one hand, Seymour Slive offers a choice of 200 drawings, with commentary. On the other hand, the team of Bevers, Hendrix, Robinson, and Schatborn amasses a selection of pairs: Rembrandt drawings, plus drawings by various students and followers. Both are remarkable achievements; both, intentionally or not, raise continuing questions about what makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt, and how we know.
Slive groups the drawings by subject, echoing Rembrandt's own propensity when organizing his albums. The categories include self-portraits, portraits, landscapes, animals, models and study sheets, nudes, copies after other works of art, figure drawings, life of women and children (a way of neatly sidestepping whether or not the images are of his own family), and genre scenes (including some biblical scenes, such as the Prodigal Son, that are separated from the categories of “historical” or “religious”). This organization reveals Rembrandt at his most varied: not only a multitude of subjects, but the great range of techniques, from broad red chalk to charcoal, inks, and washes. The sum attests to Rembrandt's dazzling facility with his materials, and his omnivorous eye.
Slive has written on Rembrandt over a span of time exceeding the artist's working life, and there are moments where he seems to shadow his subject uncannily. His creed of “connoisseurship over iconography,” as he puts it, is evident throughout; yet this phrase modestly distills his vast erudition and sympathetic eye. Here he is on Man Sharpening a Quill by Candlelight, which “captures the very moment a knife slices into the quill's shank. . . . The drawing has a distinctively portrait-like character. Perhaps it was inspired by Rembrandt's glimpse of a similar scene when one of his own students was drawing at night? But I doubt the drawing was done from life. Is it conceivable that Rembrandt had a model freeze a pose for him with his shoulders hunched, his head thrust forward, his eyes lowered, one arm resting on a table and the other in midair until he finished his sketch? Probably not” (95). As for landscapes, Slive can seem like a Sherlock Holmes drawing a wealth of detail from the most minimally delicate of sketches; at moments, he seems to enter into the pictures themselves, like some fabled Chinese master.
The impetus for the exhibition Rembrandt and His Pupils was a revelatory lecture given by Peter Schatborn during his stay at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This ambitious catalogue pits the work of Rembrandt against fifteen of his best-known pupils. The term pupil, as inferred by Schatborn and W. R. Robinson's fascinating essay on attribution, is essentially a shorthand for the numerous artists and assistants, at various levels of skill and experience, who trained with Rembrandt over the years; hence the inclusion of Jan Lievens, who worked alongside Rembrandt in the shared Leiden studio of their youth.
The choices of artists and works have been culled from a large assortment of scholarly work, notably Werner Sumowski's ten-part Drawings of the Rembrandt School (begun 1979), which was the first overview of the master's known pupils. Many of these drawings have rarely been exhibited or reproduced. The format is elaborate yet consistent. Each artist gets a chapter, which opens with an enlarged detail of his drawing and a brief biography, while a Rembrandt drawing appears on the opposite page. This is followed by another double spread of different works, without text, which are discussed further in the following pages; then another few comparative images follow. This strategy provides the opportunity for substantive comparisons by matching, as much as possible, subject matter, materials, and period. The reader is led to discern the greater virtuosity of Rembrandt's pen, his facility with many varieties of supple marks; his ability to lay washes so light as to brilliantly make use of the paper's white, or to apply them in a thunderous flood. The works of others often reveal more attention to detail, or a fussy or unfocused line. For example, a soulful study of a reclining young man by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout is finished and fluid, gracefully filling in the man's features and clothes. Rembrandt's image of a sleeping young woman, presumed to be Hendrickje, is looser and angular; thick dark marks slice across the paper to approximate her head and arms, pausing only for a more delicate rendering of her hairband.
Other pairings distinguish different approaches to a single narrative subject. It becomes clear that Rembrandt tends toward the most forceful confrontation between two figures. His brisk correction of an Annunciation by Constantijn Daniel van Renesse (fig. xii) enhances the contrast between the towering angel and the small figure of Mary, who crouches behind a lectern. Esau selling his Birthright to Jacob (Cat. 11.1, 11.2) is imagined by both Rembrandt and Ferdinand Bol as two men shaking hands across a table: in Bol's version, both brothers are sitting; in Rembrandt's, Esau is standing, armed with his bow.
Telling the difference comes down to one conclusion: Rembrandt wins. The assumption that the angel is always at his shoulder — to quote Salvador Dalí — is often unarguable: Rembrandt's correction of van Renesse's work is clearly in another league from that of the tentative amateur artist. On the other hand, Govaert Flinck's Departure of the Prodigal Son appears as fluid and assured as the master's. (Cat. 5.1, 5.2). Arent de Gelder's drawing of a nude model is described as inferior to Rembrandt's drawing of the same model from a slightly different viewpoint, with a different angle of light. (Cat. 41.1, 41.2. These also appear on the front and back book covers.) Schatborn observes, “The shadows of the brushstrokes laid in by Rembrandt behind the nude in various tones and different directions create a strong sense of space around the figure, while the nude of De Gelder protrudes less from the background . . . being more heavily shadowed, especially on her back”(238). Yet this pair of nudes, and others, appear so similar that they call into question the criteria of separate authorship. As Schwartz's commentary makes clear, the debate will continue.
The reader has a choice: lay skepticism aside and simply look, guided by the remarkable descriptive abilities of these scholars, or allow them to draw her further into the ongoing discussion. Both books are typically impressive Getty productions, promising a satisfying visual experience. The reproductions, especially enlargements that bleed to the edges, are generally vivid and detailed, the paper is matte and dazzle-free; the accompanying text has generous margins and leading; the bindings are sturdy, essential for frequent page-flipping. Together they offer a broad window into his thought and practice, whether out in the street or countryside, or with his pupils in the lively, busy studio. As revealed with almost physical intensity, these young artists were lucky to be there.
