Rembrandt in Amsterdam

In his native city of Leiden, the 25-year-old artist had already built a reputation as a wunderkind, impressing art lovers with his brilliance and inventiveness. Once in Amsterdam, he hit on a clever idea to stand out in the city’s overwhelmingly competitive art market: his first name would become his brand.

Always on the lookout for fresh talent, the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh invited Rembrandt to move to Amsterdam where he provided him with work painting portraits. The booming city with its worldwide trade networks was governed by the laws of a free capitalist market. Artworks were hot commodities. The broad art-buying public didn’t just consist of the wealthy mercantile class; in Amsterdam, even craftsmen and seafarers bought art.

Aspirational merchants and wealthy burghers – everybody wanted to be painted by the newcomer. Within a short time, Rembrandt had become one of the most sought-after portraitists in the city. His portraits convey liveliness and personality in a way never seen before. They secured a lasting clientele for the young painter and printmaker.

But Rembrandt wanted to do more than just portraiture. He pulled out all the stops, ensuring breathtaking variety in his art.

By the mid-1600s, the Dutch Republic was the richest country in Europe. The bustling metropolis of Amsterdam was home to the largest staple port on the continent. From there, sea-trading routes spread out across the globe.

The Dutch Republic occupied a relatively small territory. It comprised little more than a strip of coast, with a small population and few raw materials. But thanks to global overseas trade, the young state gained enormous wealth and power.

Between 1600 and 1662, the population of Amsterdam grew from 40,000 to 210,000. Wars and poverty, as well as religious and political persecution drove tens of thousands of Europeans to the Dutch Republic. Especially in Amsterdam, with its strong labour market and relative religious tolerance, immigrants hoped to find a life free from the constraints of absolutist rule and religious dogma. People from other parts of the world also poured into the city.

Rembrandt’s neighbours came from all over the world. He lived in the traditional Jewish quarter on the Breestraat (today Jodenbreestraat and Sint Antoniesbreestraat). These cosmopolitan surroundings are reflected in his drawings and paintings.

Rembrandt’s art, too, is intrinsically bound up in European colonial history. Objects from all over the world can be discovered in his images.

Rembrandt painted this oil sketch on tropical jequitiba wood. The wood was cut in the colony of New Holland in northeast Brazil, where it was used for the construction of boxes to transport sugar. Artists used discarded boxes as a cheap support for their paintings.

This print is executed on delicate Asian paper, a precious material brought to Europe via Pacific routes. Everyday objects, artworks and naturalia (natural products) from distant lands were traded as objects of wonder, and anyone who was anyone in the Dutch Republic boasted at least a small collection of them.

Rembrandt’s art was in hot demand with wealthy merchants, many of whom profited from the worldwide maritime trade. In 1634 the artist took the decisive step towards professional independence: he joined the Amsterdam Guild of Saint Luke, the official association of artists.

A rare historical object, Rembrandt’s guild medal survives to this day. His membership in the Guild of Saint Luke gave him the right to lead his own workshop and teach apprentices. By training younger artists and selling their work as well as his own, he became highly productive. He gained wealth and influence, not merely as an artist but as an entrepreneur.

Rembrandt’s face does not just appear in his self-portraits; he also lent his own features to role portraits (featuring a mythical or historical figure) and even character heads, known as tronies, which were very popular on the art market.

Rembrandt and his pupils specialized in powerful scenes from Old Testament stories. One example is the story of “The Expulsion of Hagar” from the Old Testament (Gen 21: 9−14). Rembrandt recorded the version by his own teacher Pieter Lastman and created his own interpretation in an etching. Rembrandt’s workshop produced numerous variations. Their paintings are known for their warm, earthy colours and dramatic lighting effects.

A mother and her small son are banished to the desert. This dramatic theme was novel and quickly became highly popular on the Amsterdam art market.

A self-portrait consisting of a thousand lines: Rembrandt presents himself as a modest printmaker, deep in concentration as he works on an etching. There is no hint of his fame as an artist and business owner. One wonders what image he is drawing on the plate, but the chosen perspective, from below, blocks our view. Our imagination is as important here as that of the artist, as he conjures up images from his own mind.

Some impressions from a printmaker’s edition went for the price of a sausage, and were sold, like sausages, at market stalls, while others fetched record prices at fairs and auctions. While many were mass produced, Rembrandt printed his intricate etchings in small batches. They were avidly collected by connoisseurs during his lifetime.

The Hundred Guilder Print, probably Rembrandt’s most famous etching, is the subject of many legends. Its market price is said to have been 100 guilders, a hundred times what an average print would fetch. A rare print by Rembrandt could cost as much as a large canvas painting.

Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print is one of the most sophisticated images in European art history. To this day, some mysteries around the work remain unresolved, but what do we know about it?

From plate to paper: An etching can be printed many times. This portrait shows the Amsterdam print dealer and publisher Clement de Jonghe.

De Jonghe proudly acquired 74 of the 300 copperplates that Rembrandt produced in total. As a publisher, he probably reprinted these plates for sale. But as a passionate collector he must have treasured a product directly from Rembrandt’s hand.

Rembrandt covered the whole artistic spectrum, producing portraits, landscapes and dramatic narratives in the form of drawings, prints and paintings. But his talent didn’t stop there. He also captured aspects of reality that are invisible and fleeting: light, mood, weather and all nuances of human expression. It is precisely this ability that accounted for his reputation as a “universal artist” among his contemporaries.

Rembrandt’s paintings often disturb or horrify. But despite their emotional power they can also exude tenderness and mystery. Especially in the depiction of human facial expressions, Rembrandt was interested in nuances, ambiguity and hidden irony.

David plays the harp before the aged king Saul, who is affected by depression – “tormented by an evil spirit,” as the Bible says. The scene from the Old Testament (1 Sam 16:14−23) that Rembrandt shows encapsulates only one moment, but this small painting conveys the whole tumultuous history of the two men. We can read reams in Saul’s facial expression alone. It reveals a bitter, sad king, so touched by tender David’s harp playing that it momentarily lifts him from his melancholy. But it also conveys his envy, distrust and wrath. These feelings, which Saul will one day harbour against his young rival, the future King David, are anticipated by Rembrandt in his moving depiction of the king’s facial expressions.

A scene of horror. On first seeing this cruel sight, we may wish to avert our eyes. Rembrandt tells the story of the biblical hero Samson, focusing on and visualizing the brutal blinding. Rembrandt was testing the limits of what can be depicted and viewed in a painting.

Like consumer culture today, the Amsterdam art market was in constant flux. What was valued one day was no longer prized the next. In the mid-17th century, tastes rapidly changed. A trend from France started to dominate in the Netherlands: art modelled on the rules of classical antiquity was becoming ever more popular. Classical art, with its lighter colours and clear forms, was very different from Rembrandt’s manner of painting. But while many paintings in the new style seem uniform and conventional to us today, Rembrandt’s works from his time in Amsterdam lost none of their depth or individual expressiveness.

It is not just the composition of Rembrandt’s Diana and Her Nymphs that is unusual, the work is also striking for its content. Rembrandt has combined two stories from ancient mythology in one image, that of the hunter Actaeon and that of the nymph Callisto. No other artist had done that before.