Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
11310108 Hisataka Kuzumi
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was one of the great painters in the world in 1600s. He was born in Leiden, the Netherlands in 1606 and entered the University of Leiden in 1620. However, because he had a greater inclination towards painting, he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden historic painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh. After he had a brief apprenticeship with the famous painter, Peter Lastman, who gave an important influence to Rembrandt’s paintings in Amsterdam, he opened a studio in Leiden. Then, he started to paint a lot of works.
It is said that Rembrandt had produced over 600 paintings, nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings. Mostly, his works are characterized by his painting style called chiaroscuro. We can find that he used many different ways to paint and make his works better. All of his works are marvelous. You can enjoy his works much better than before if you understand the background of his works and what he was feeling. This time, I am going to introduce his styles of painting and works by classifying them into three periods as a painter.
The first period was 1620 – 1634. In the earlier term of this period, Rembrandt mostly produced many of his religious paintings. Most of his self portraits were also drawn. During this period, he was seeking his best style of painting and tried painting in different styles. Around 1630, he started to use realistic style and produced portraits, and then he became famous as a good painter. In 1632, he finally produced one of his famous portraits, “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp,” which is possessed in The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. He married a daughter of a lawyer and mayor of Leeuwarden, Saskia van Uylenburgh. She was a good wife and he was inspired by her, so his painting style slightly changed after his marriage. In this period, he had grown up into a famous painter and found his basic painting style, so we can say the first period was the origin of Rembrandt as a painter.
The second period was 1635 – 1654. He couldn’t be satisfied with realistic style and tried expressing human spirit. He succeeded and was rich enough to start to collect art works around 1636. However, his private life was not happy. His son had been born in 1635 and died within 2 months. His two daughters also had died soon after their births in 1638 and 1640. What was worse, his loving wife, Saskia died in 1642 though he got a son who would die earlier than his father. He suffered from those terrible incidents, but his ability of painting matured and he produced his famous great work, “De compagnie van kapitein Frans Banning Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburgh,” though this work took a lot of criticism those days. In this term, he faced a lot of difficulties and had deep sorrow, but he developed his great ability and works and became one of the famous special painters.
The third period was 1655 – 1669. In 1650s, Anglo-Dutch Wars had broken out and Rembrandt got so big a damage economically that he got an adjudication of bankruptcy. In this period, his style changed again. Paintings increased in size, colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. His works came to express deeper emotion and attracted a lot of people. In 1669, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn died in Amsterdam and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk.
Rembrandt was a gifted painter who could express deep mind and emotion by using light parts and dark parts. Now, a lot of museums and galleries own his great works which attract people all over the world. He has also inspired many painters both who are famous and not famous, but no one can use chiaroscuro better than him. By knowing how the painter is like or what happened to him, we can enjoy the painter’s works further, and more or less, you can feel what the painter want people to feel or what his works are saying. Isn’t it like we are talking with a legendary painter and his works? Rembrandt harmenszoon van Rijn and his works are giving you this lesson.
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