Rembrandt/not Rembrandt

Some disputes are destined to remain forever unsettled -- although the give and take does usually add considerably to our stock of knowledge:

The arguments [over Rembrandt attributions] seem certain to run for some time yet, judging by a new exhibition in which the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford concludes that four works dismissed as imitations by critics are in fact Rembrandt masterpieces.

Dr Christopher Brown, whose analysis of the works forms the basis of the exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London, delivers a withering critique of the Rembrandt specialists who have rejected them in the past.

One of the works, Good Samaritan (1633), was dismissed by the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), which has been classifying the artist's works since the 1960s. The work revealed an "execution so weak and the architectural details so insecure, that the painting must be considered an old copy after a lost original," the RRP said.

But after a discoloured varnish was removed from the piece in cleaning, a fluent, confident handling of the subject was exposed, plus a palette consistent with that period of Rembrandt's work and the monogram RHL (Rembrandt, son of Harmen, of Leiden).

Full article here. The Wallace Collection website is here. More at Codart.

Posted by David on November 29, 2006 9:17 PM