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

An Elderly Man in an Armchair. Photo credit: W. A.
Ciark Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Portrait of a Bearded Old Man. Photo credit: Adolph
D. & Wilkins C. Williams Collection, Virginia Museum
of Fine Arts.
36 - Preservings No. 26, 2006
Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburch. Photo credit:
Adolph D. & Wilkins C. Williams Collection, Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts.
Mennonite.” This may have been a companion
picture to the “Old Woman in an Armchair” in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The large two-volume Rembrandt Bible, a
copy of which may be seen in the Bethel College
Historical Library, with its wealth of paintings,
drawings, and sketches, shows the extent
to which Rembrandt used Biblical materials, at
first no doubt because of their intrinsic dramatic
quality but certainly also in his latter years as a
means of expressing his religious faith. To quote
Theodore Rousseau, Jr., Curator of Paintings,
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Rembrandt
knew well the moving, familiar stories of the
Old and New Testaments and was attracted by
the opportunity they gave him to paint human
beings under the stress of deep emotions.”
“The Deposition of Christ” from the John
and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and “The
Apostle Paul” from the Widener Collection in
the National Gallery are good examples of his
portrayal of religious subjects,
Even in his presentation of nature Rembrandt
sought to go beyond the obvious and the
material and interpret the spiritual aspect of a
scene. In the Widener collection at the National
Gallery we see an outstanding example of his
rather rare landscapes, “The Mill.” Of it Horace
Shipp says in The Dutch Masters:
Once in the country he saw a mill silhouetted
against the evening sky. He painted it-an
asset for the “company” which owned him.
In 1911 it was sold for one hundred thousand
pounds, the highest price any picture had commanded
up to that date. It reveals Rembrandt
approaching nature in that same mood of search
for the infinite which underlies almost all his
work: the subject pictures, the scriptural ones,
the portraiture even. The immensity of earth and
sky in such a picture. . . is a physical counterpart
of that immensity of spiritual experience of
‘The Three Crosses’ . . . .
Charles H. Caffin in How to Study Pictures
makes the claim that Rembrandt is recognized
as the Prince of Etchers. Included in his prints
are landscapes, portraits, Biblical subjects
and studies of beggars. Since Rembrandt was
Self-Portrait. Photo credit: Mellon Collection, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
Portrait of Himself. Photo credit: The Frick Collection,
New York
devoted to truth and sincerity, he presented
people as they were. This art method lent itself
particularly well for the presentation of Biblical
subjects, as with a few effective lines he was
able to suggest motives and reveal emotions.
Among his great portrait etchings is that of
Cornelis Claesz. Anslo, the Mennonite minister.
Originals of this etching are found in the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Fogg Museum of Art
in Cambridge and the Mennonite Art Collection
in the Bethel College Historical Library.
In the same year that Rembrandt executed the
etching of Anslo he also painted the well known
portrait of Anslo and his wife. (Mennonite Life,
January, 1952).
Such great etchings as “Christ Healing the
Sick” known as the Hundred Gulden Print,
and “Jews in a Synagogue” may be seen in
the Metropolitan Museum, while “Beggars
Receiving Alms” is in the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston.
Fortunately, original paintings, drawings,
and etchings by Rembrandt are sufficiently
numerous in America that all who wish may
increase their appreciation for the great master
by visiting museums in their particular area.
The literature on Rembrandt is also extensive,
much of it designed for the amateur in the realm
of art appreciation. Mennonites need not deny
themselves an acquaintance with this great artist
of the human spirit.
One writer estimates that of Rembrandt’s
total output, we still possess more than six hundred
paintings, well over two hundred etchings,
and not far short of two thousand drawings.
(Tancred Borenius in Rembrandt, Selected
Paintings, New York and London, (Phaidon
Publishers, Inc., 1952).
Besides the art galleries represented in the
paintings shown on these pages, prints of Rembrandt
paintings have been received from the
John G. Johnson Art Collection, Philadelphia,
The Art Institute of Chicago, The Cleveland
Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum,
New York.