Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Some Rembrandts In America
John F. Schmidt (Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Life 11, 1956, 155-159)
Boston The Artist in His Studio. Photo credit: Museum
of Fine Arts.
Nothing short of amazing is the continued
and increasing popularity of a Dutch artist
born three hundred and fifty years ago. Among
the treasures of the creative genius of man his
paintings, drawings, and etchings are prized
the world over. Scores of Rembrandt’s works
have found their way to America where in
museums and art collections they continue to
inspire the multitudes who visit these centers
of art. As one handbook puts it, “Probably no
other artist in history has won such wide and
enduring popularity.”
The Rembrandt collections in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City and in
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.
C., are outstanding in their scope and variety
of Rembrandts. Apart from these major coflections,
however, almost every large museum
prides itself on showing at least one, if not several,
works of the master. Because Rembrandt
van Rijn, according to Horace Shipp in The
Dutch Masters, “ . . . stands among the supreme
half-dozen artists of the world,” such collectors
as Andrew W. Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Joseph
E. Widener, J. P. Morgan and others of similar
means and persistence have spent vast fortunes
to bring Rembrandt to America.
Among the subjects Rembrandt treated,
religious subjects take first place, followed no
doubt by portraits. While less in quantity, his
landscapes are no less remarkable in revealing
the artist’s deep understanding of his subject
A Girl with a Broom. Photo credit: Mellon Collection,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
and his consummate artistry. His religious
subjects are not as numerous in American galleries
as his production of such paintings would
indicate that they should be. Happily they are
present in the larger collections.
A few representative Rembrandts are presented
to readers of Mennonite Life from the
collections in American museums.
Among the portraits by Rembrandt the most
fascinating and revealing are his self-portraits,
ranging from the time of his youth, when he
was a successful and even fashionable master,
to his lonely old age when his face reflected the
tragedy of bankruptcy and the unbroken will
of a great man. From the Mellon collection in
the National Gallery of Art we present a selfportrait
from the time of his last years. Of all
Rembrandts in the National Gallery of Art, this
was singled out by David E. Finley, curator, as
the most significant. He says of this painting:
Here Rembrandt seems to reveal his whole
complex personality. He makes us conscious of
his strength, his weakness, his tragedies as an
individual, his triumphs as an artist. Most of all,
he impresses us with his deep understanding of
Portrait of Youth in Black Cap. Photo credit:William
Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art. Atkins Museum of Fine
Arts, Kansas City.
human nature and his unshakable faith in the
essential nobility of man.
Much has been said by art critics of Rembrandt’s
profound psychological penetration
of his subjects. E. H. Gombrich in The Story
of Art has this to say:
“Other portraits by great masters may look
alive, they may even reveal the character of their
sitter through a characteristic expression or a
striking attitude. . . But in Rembrandt’s portraits
we feel face to face with real human beings with
all their tragic failings and all their sufferings.
His keen and steady eyes seem to look straight
into the human heart.”
Rembrandt’s close association with Mennonites
and his appreciation of simple Mennonite
piety as revealed in his Biblical paintings, has
intrigued Mennonite scholars. In the W. A.
Clark collection in the Corcoran Gallery of
Art, Washington, D. C, we find the painting,
“An Elderly Man in an Armchair,” of which
the handbook notes that he “was probably a
The Mill. Photo credit: Widener Collection. National
Gallery of Art. Washington. D. C.
The Deposition of Christ. Photo credot: John and
Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida,
The Apostle Paul. Photo credit: Widener Collection,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
Preservings No. 26, 2006 - 35