Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions
Catalog for an exhibition held at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Galley, New York from September 9, 2015 to December 12, 2015. Curated by Robert Fucci.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) manipulated his copperplates in unprecedented ways to achieve printed images that were often in flux. That many of the different results were circulated as finished works in their own right marked a new moment in the appreciation of printmaking and the collecting of prints in the seventeenth century.
Rembrandt was the first artist to treat the print medium as a means of crafting visibly changing images. He was also the first printmaker to fully explore the use of newly available Asian papers for their aesthetic and technical effects. Many of these variations were the outcome of Rembrandt’s intense and restless search for results that satisfied his artistic sense. Others – especially among the portraits – were probably produced at the instigation of some of his print connoisseur patrons, a prospect that this exhibition explores further.
Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions highlights 18 of the artist’s most notably intriguing or dramatically altered prints. It gathers together 52 impressions from 14 different U.S. collections to best show the images in their circulated iterations. All of the works exhibited here were produced during Rembrandt’s lifetime, and almost all were likely printed by the artist himself or under his direct supervision. (from exhibit webpage)
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