Rembrandt in America, the largest ever Rembrandt exhibition in the US

The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts presents the largest of all ever held in the United States, an exhibition by Rembrandt van Rijn (Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-1669).

The exposition, entitled “Rembrandt in America” (Rembrandt in America) opened on June 24 and combines a large number of genuine paintings by the famous Dutch master. It is rare to see together the most valuable canvases from two dozen museums and several private collections, reflecting the entire creative path of the great master.

The exhibition features about fifty paintings, thirty of which, without a doubt, belong to the brush of Rembrandt himself, which is confirmed by repeated studies, including very recent ones. The authorship of the remaining paintings remains controversial. In particular, the works of Rembrandt students are so good that many eminent experts, museum curators and auctioneers are still puzzling over the establishment of authorship of a particular canvas. The organizers of the exhibition presented them here for direct comparison, to the public.

At the exhibition you can see several world-famous works of Rembrandt. Among them - “Lucretia”, where the image of a young offended woman depicts the artist’s lover, Hendrickje Stoffels, “Portrait of a Girl in a Short Cloak”, reproduced on the cover of the exhibition catalog, portrait of Amsterdam merchant Marten Looten, portrait of a young man with her hair done at the end of the artist’s life, demonstrating his full satisfaction with the beauty of youth and being a vivid example of the artist’s ability to create the illusion of a light brush touch.

The public can see the paintings of Rembrandt, starting from the first days of his existence as an artist, as a young arrogant student. The next period of creativity is the peak of popularity, when Rembrandt becomes the most fashionable painter in Amsterdam, and then the years of his social and financial decline, which turned out, however, to be very fruitful in a creative sense.

Thanks to the chronological presentation of objects at the exhibition, you can clearly trace the amazing artistic development of the master and the deepening of his understanding of man. In Rembrandt’s works, the boundary between fact and fiction is sometimes blurred; he very often portrays his family members as historical and legendary figures. Self-portraits of the artist, written by him in large numbers, vividly reflect the changes in his own appearance and life. Some paintings have such a powerful effect that it seems impossible to withstand the eyes of the painter.

One of the most important artists in the history of European art, the most important representative of the golden age of Dutch painting, Rembrandt van Rijn is known for his uncanny ability to depict light and shadow, convey the full range of experiences of his sitters, and accurately reflect historical and religious events. Neither before nor after Rembrandt, art did not know such an incredible emotional richness of paintings.

Anna Sidorova