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It cannot have escaped the notice of those interested in the arts that the works and character of Rembrandt are undergoing a radical reassessment. The Rembrandt Research Project, a team of Dutch scholars and scientists, were at the time, drastically reducing his oeuvres, proposing that half the holding of the National Gallery as well as many other well-loved masterpieces such as "The Polish Rider" (in the Frick) are not after all by the master. Brian Sewell has labelled their findings "half-cock, potty, dotty and unhinged". I agree, but would go further and say this is only the most recent episode in an area of scholarship that has been straying further and further from the historic evidence since 1915.
Parallel to this assault on his work and related to it, recent books on Rembrandt seem determined to cut his personality down to size. In a recent broadcast one author, Gary Schwartz, said that in the four hundred and fifty documents pertaining to the life of Rembrandt he could find "nothing that indicated a spirit of charity, warmth or friendliness, all was cold, calculating, nasty". Svetlana Alpers, another, described him as a "hoarder in the capitalist mould". Not a pretty description of his collection, much of which was a large theatrical wardrobe he used for his tableaux vivent. Joseph Heller twists the dagger in these wounds in his novel “Picture This” All this is perhaps a useful antidote to the cloying epithets that were the stock in trade of a previous generation of Rembrandt scholars, but they seem to me to be as biased in the opposite direction.
Gary Schwartz finds Rembrandt to have been an "ill-tempered" and "bad mannered", tyrannical teacher. The facts as I perceive them argue the contrary. Rembrandt was a very successful teacher in two respects: He had very many students who paid him double the going rate, and some of them turned into good or notably successful painters. Schwartz chooses to be most moved by a passage in Hoogstratten (one of Rembrandt's less talented ex-students) in which he describes how many times he shed copious tears caused by the criticism of his teacher. Rembrandt is not mentioned by name, and Hoogstratten was also taught by his father. Even if it was Rembrandt's criticism that caused the tears, one student in fifty is rather slender evidence on which to condemn the master. Few teachers of art, however kind in intent, have not experienced the same. Teaching art is a touchy business.
Again in the documents we find stories that suggest to me - but not to Schwartz - that Rembrandt was on good, friendly terms with his students. Baldinucci called him "a first-class joker who laughed at every body". Houbraken tells of how his students used to paint coins on the floor; apparently however low the denomination, Rembrandt would stoop to pick them up, he adds "not that he was particularly greedy". This snippet has been embroidered by Heller and marks the lowest point to which the deformation of Rembrandt's character has yet sunk.
Houbraken's other story involves a student and model who were caught "in flagrante" and were chased, naked out of Eden, by Rembrandt brandishing his stick. It all seems rollicking good fun to me, not the action of a tyrant. Alpers chooses to see this incident as a piece of deliberate stage management in preparation for the subject of Adam and Eve!
When we look at the drawings in the category of students' drawings corrected by Rembrandt in Benesch we find similar misunderstandings. "Job and his Comforters" (B1379) (Pl. 1 ) is such a drawing.
According to Benesch "Renesse corrected by Rembrandt". Renesse was one of Rembrandt's more talented students of drawing, but this drawing must be Rembrandt - Rembrandt correcting Rembrandt. He has made a mess of it as a result, but it is a most instructive mess; Rembrandt has ruined his own successful drawing in pursuit of a new idea; i.e. he is ruthless with his own work not that of his students.
The two poses of Job (on the right) are clearly done with the same pen, the same diluted ink and with the same touch. They are drawn one on top of the other and both are equally true and expressive. In the first version Job argues with his wife and in the second he looks despairingly towards heaven. If Rembrandt really drew this heavy correction over a student drawing of such quality as this he truly was a brute, but I see no evidence that he did. He is correcting his own beautiful drawing. That is Rembrandt at work! The way Benesch catalogues the drawing relegates this work of prime importance to the side-lines, a tragedy because it tells us how radically he was prepared to reworked a success.
I do see evidence that the drawing has been reworked, probably by a later hand. That happens even to Rembrandt, alas. The hatchings on the thigh of the seated figure on the left and the heavy meaningless hatchings above him have nothing to do with either Rembrandt or Renesse.
I find a lot of what Schwartz has to say about the darker side of Rembrandt's character very well researched and convincing, but then few people appear at their best when litigating. Schwartz puts the blackest possible construction on the evidence he finds and does not pretend to understand Rembrandt the artist, which is after all the side of the man that interests us most. Heller does have such pretensions, and indeed treats us to some of the most sweeping and appalling judgements on Rembrandt ever expressed in print: "His pomposity of language is not inconsistent with the puffed-up personality we have come to know, or with the imperious demeanour in the self-portraits executed when his misfortunes were at their worst". So much for the Rembrandt of the late self-portraits. Of the overwhelming masterpiece "The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis" he writes, "His huge painting was rejected and returned to him after a year. See it in Stockholm and you will understand why. It is anything but decorative. Rembrandt received nothing for it but the canvas. Probably he was disappointed! Heller goes on to blame the aged and bankrupt Rembrandt for cutting this magnificent canvas down in an effort to sell it. This is not just lacking in tact or charity; it is calculated slander. Why has he chosen to do this to Rembrandt, an artist that he has obviously studied closely and even enjoyed on occasion? In the long run I cannot see that it will make a lot of difference to our assessment of his standing as an artist if he finally turns out to be as nasty as Michelangelo or Picasso. On the other hand, the radical reduction in his accepted works does make a great deal of difference.
The confusion among scholars has now come to the point where they find it necessary to reduce the numbers of works attributed to Rembrandt in an effort to reduce their own confusion. I wish to show here how the scholars' inability to respond positively to exquisite drawing in many cases, and particularly when they find it in company with drawing which may occasionally be third-rate, has deprived us of the view of many masterpieces which I believe to be authentic and important works of Rembrandt. He was, besides being among the very great, also perhaps the most variable of the great masters in the quality of his output. As Houbraken (a contemporary Amsterdamer) wrote, "... certain details are painted with the utmost care whilst the rest of the picture looks as if it has been painted with a whitewash brush, without the slightest regard for the drawing itself." I find this variable technique a very positive virtue - Rembrandt said, "... a picture is finished when the painter feels that he has expressed his intention in it."
A certain wonder and diligence in seeing can be expressed by the artist who paints the bloom on a grape or the dew-drop. Rembrandt himself could operate very well at that level, but surely his greatness depends on more than this. I believe that his vision is conveyed as much by what he leaves out, or presents in an unfocused way as by what he includes. What some may see as carelessness or laziness can be seen as a technique that Rembrandt uses quite positively to focus our attention where he wants it. Rembrandt's genius requires us to look beyond the standard clichés. He shocks us into seeing in a new way. He actively wants to persuade us that all his flying angels “are worthless” because not observed from nature. No other artist has purposely done inferior work to stress his belief that observation is all; nor has had so profound an effect on art since. It is very important to understand what he stood for right now; we cannot afford to wait till art historians catch up with him. Standards of connoisseurship are in very steep decline.
An example of the decline in connoisseurship among Rembrandt scholars can be documented in the recent history of the drawing "David on his Deathbed", a drawing that I would not only attribute unhesitatingly to Rembrandt but would place among the top ten as one which demonstrates his particular kind of excellence (Pl.2). The sheet is in poor condition because Rembrandt spent a lot of time tinkering with the precise pose of the two central figures and exhausted the paper as a result.
I can see, as any fool can, that the two outer figures are not just weak: they are painful. My very high esteem of the drawing is based on the two central figures. The figures in themselves are beautiful, but most particularly it is the relationship between them that demands our close attention. If there was one quality which I would put before all else in distinguishing between Rembrandt and lesser draftsmen it would be his grasp of space: the space relationship between figures and its significance in communicating the inner drama. This is his great achievement, and where his greatest originality lies. These are the qualities I see here.
Before examining the excellence of this drawing, let us look at the treatment it has received at the hands of the "experts" over time. It was bought by the second Duke of Devonshire from the son and heir of one of Rembrandt's most successful students, Govert Flink. It has remained at Chatsworth since 1723. It was one of a collection of Rembrandt drawings of "high quality" bought from the same source. I think it would be fair to describe its pedigree therefore as of the best. Early scholars unanimously accepted it as a Rembrandt. It was not until 1922 that Benesch (author of the current catalogue) raised doubts about it; since then it has been attributed to various different Rembrandt students. More recently, Professor S. Slive describes it as one of the rare weak drawings among those bought from Flinck. So we find that before 1922 scholars were willing to overlook the feeble parts and give their vote for the good or great, after 1922 they were not. I suspect they are unable to see the good or great. Let us look for ourselves.
For those who believe that the art of drawing is a matter of manual dexterity Rembrandt drawings as a whole must come as a disappointment. In this one we find enough skill to know that we are looking at the work of an old hand. What one can see of the initial sketching, over the top of the bed for example, or in the drapery as it flows over the top rung and is then hitched up round the bed-post at the foot end or drapes over the delicately striped bed-head is certainly not the work of a mere student, nor is the drawing of the bed post; though one need not gasp at it, it is pure Rembrandt. The rest of the drawing has a chewed-over look not in the least incompatible with Rembrandt's work. We find plenty of examples of him chewing things over, scratching things out, cutting things up, adding new material over an old worn surface which has become too scarred to take any more or even doubling the worked surface. All these "unprofessional" techniques we find in Rembrandt as painter, etcher and draftsman. Anyone who thinks that great artists must always get it right first time would again get a rude shock from the study of Rembrandt. There may have been artists who did, but Rembrandt was not one of them. As we have seen he can niggle away at details when he is truly engaged. The paper on which the "Deathbed" is drawn is not in good condition, nor is the drawing itself. My guess is that it is not far from the condition in which Rembrandt left it. Rembrandt was used to making the materials of his art bend to his will, but if he finds that the material is no longer pliant, he assaults it directly, what we are seeing here is Rembrandt taking great pains to get what he wants.
Again this is true of Rembrandt in all media. In his painting "Lamentation over the Dead Christ" now in the National Gallery, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who once owned it, counted 17 alterations by additions of this kind. Rembrandt worked on this tiny study (31.9 x 26.7 cm) over a period of six years. These emendations clearly did not put Sir Joshua off his original purchase of the painting. From the fact that he counted them we can presume that it gained in fascination for him as a result. There is a similar story about Beethoven. He changed a certain passage 22 times. The first and the last version on examination turned out to be the same. This is not a sign of devastating incompetence or vacillation. It is one of the paths of creation - in fact the usual path, that of trial and error. Mozart did not take it but Beethoven, Michelangelo and Rembrandt did. Incidentally, Sir Joshua so admired Rembrandt that he made his own self-portrait "in the style of" Rembrandt. Very many contemporary artists admire him partly because of the directness of his method. There is absolutely no bullshit in the Rembrandt I see.
When we come to examine the two central figures we must not be too worried therefore by the fact that the marks by which they are conveyed are scuffed, even scruffy. The "accents" so beloved (but never defined) by an older generation of Rembrandt scholars seem to me often to be no more than his second thoughts which necessarily have to be stated more firmly so as to read over and cancel the first. Benesch often refuses to acknowledge Rembrandt in his most delicate mode; hence the refusal to see the original Job figure as Rembrandt at work; he likes Rembrandt to be making “bold strokes”.
For example, David's upraised hand does not compare favourably with many such hands to be found in Rembrandt drawings. This hand has obviously been subjected to a lot of erasure, its blackness is not, in my opinion, a deliberate "accent", it is a mess that Rembrandt found he could live with. It serves well enough because the hand is so placed in relation to the head, the shoulders and elbow that it conveys a very particular gesture of reluctance with wonderful precision. Had he wished to change its position yet again or make its form clearer, he would have been more or less obliged to get out one of his pieces of gummed paper and stick it over the scuffed hand. We find these erasures very much more frequently in Rembrandt than in Raphael not because he is less competent than Raffle but because he is so much more sensitive to positioning in space. From Raphael's perspective this is a clumsy drawing. To appreciate Rembrandt we must adopt a new perspective. Most of the ineptitude I find among Rembrandt scholars stems from the fact that they have entirely failed to see this, and have tried to make Rembrandt conform to their expectations of an Italian workshop. Rembrandt's aims and methods are very different and much more appealing to the modern sensibility among artists.
The figure of David contains no single detail so well drawn that we are obliged to recognise the hand of Rembrandt and none other; though the head is both good and typical. I say it is a Rembrandt because I receive from the drawing so sharp and clear a sense of the whole. The whole gesture of David and how that gesture interlocks with that of Solomon, that is the pith of the drawing after all. The other two figures are peripheral to the interest. True, the presence of the witness (Nathan) and Bathsheba do help us to identify the subject, so does the harp tucked away there behind the table.
Because of their dismal quality I would prefer to be able to suggest that the two outer figures were perhaps drawn from imagination. But I will be showing later that these two figures were indeed present in those precise positions in Rembrandt's bedroom for this drawing and another (B509, P1.3).
First let us look at the other central figure, of Solomon. The back of his head is probably the worst part, from the point of view of condition, in the whole drawing. Nonetheless we can still see that as "he bows himself over the bed", as the Bible tells us, he turns his head to the right. I don't think that it is fanciful to say that in spite of its condition it would be difficult to name a drawing that conveys emotion more clearly; that of filial love radiates from this figure of Solomon. The message gets through loud and clear in spite of the condition. Would this be possible for a lesser artist than Rembrandt? We read this figure as surely as we read the back of a great actor seen from the gallery. The detail may have gone but the essence remains.
"Rembrandt did not hesitate to oppose and contradict our own artistic laws ... He asserted that one should let oneself be guided by nature and by no other law", (Joachim von Sandart a contemporary painter) complains. But where else but in the study of nature could he have learnt his art? No other artist had arrived at this level before him. This drawing is the essence of what Rembrandt is all about: the movement of spirit, the expression of feeling, in the physical world; and in this respect this drawing is not weak, it is very, very strong. The second Duke of Devonshire could see that, why cannot our Rembrandt scholars? By trying to teach us to doubt this remarkable drawing, they have demonstrated their own insensitivity when it comes to appreciating the finer things in life. They should be found other forms of employment.
How does Rembrandt achieve this miracle? The answer is deceptively simple. Every mark that Rembrandt makes is read spatially. The great frame of the bed gives us the overall sense of how we and Rembrandt see the space. Our eye level is just above Solomon's head; we look down on the horizontal surface of the bed and we know how David's left hand turns the corner on its near edge, how his right hand and elbow move across it, and, more important, how the axes of the head and shoulders relate to it. Equally in the figure of Solomon we can feel how he bridges the gap between himself and the bed. The beautifully observed fall of drapery across his back and calves tells us all we need to know. Rembrandt conveys enormous depth of feeling through space relationships, a new economy of means.
For the purposes of analysis, Rembrandt's art of drawing can be divided into several stages, each requiring observation, memory and imagination working together. We know that he lavished a great deal of care on setting up the scene, “ he would spend a day or even two adjusting the folds of a turban until he was satisfied” ( Houbraken). But there is no reason to suppose that his models were any better at expressing feeling than those we know today. The truth is that however good they were at getting into the part, after a quarter of an hour of holding the pose it is likely that they would be expressing more of their real aches and pains than of their imagined feelings. Rembrandt certainly needed the physical presence of models, but he would not have given us David and Solomon had he relied on them completely. As Roger de Piles wrote, what one finds in Rembrandt is "the character of his country filtered through a vivid imagination". De Piles (1699) is the most perceptive commentator ever on Rembrandt.
Drawing from observation is necessarily an act of memory. However short the gap between looking and creating an image on paper, that gap is filled with vital mental processes that should not be overlooked. The next act, that of critical appraisal: seeing whether the forms made fit with the rest so as to convey the desired message requires a more general long-term memory of how people actually behave in the real world and how we perceived their meaning. It seems to me from study of his works that Rembrandt had a very great ability to "reproduce concrete subjects" (Roger de Piles), but he was incapable or unwilling to create without reality in front of him as a starting point. From this we may conclude that Rembrandt's long-term memory, like that of many artists I know, was too vague to work from directly. He needed the physical presence of the models to prompt it. A stage or film director would be doing the same today. He might have said to the actor, "Try it again, please, with more sense of piety - look at your father, walk slowly towards the bed, pause for the count of five, sink reverently to your knees, head slightly more inclined towards the hand - perfect." We all recognise what works in expressing a certain mood, but we do not know precisely what is right until we see it. The imagination needs material to work on. For the visual artist memory is not enough. Rembrandt recognised this and therefore went further than any other artist I know to feed his imagination, result the richest imagination in the entire history of art. It is said that Gericault needed a horse, if only an old cab horse, to work from to produce one of his dynamic chargers. Re-enactments stimulate the necessary memories, imagination criticises and interprets those memories. Far from being a rare quality, imagination is necessary for survival.
All this must make it plain that the over-fastidious attitudes of today's scholars are not just weeding out marginal works that nobody (bar the owners) really care about. They are discarding really important, defining works such as this one, which help us to understand Rembrandt the artist, his strengths and weaknesses, something that many artists and teachers of art will certainly want to know. An artist of Rembrandt's stature is not just of academic interest. What he could do and what he could not do, what he believed, all will continue to influence art students for the foreseeable future. At present the truth has been turned on its head. His actual studio practice can be deduced from his work but not by today’s scholars.
There are, in fact, a number of Rembrandt drawings of deathbed scenes that bear direct comparison with this one of David. Most of the others have been described as the death bed of Isaac (with good reason). Rembrandt was not in the habit of signing, naming or dating his drawings, hence the massive scholarly intervention. The drawing that I can demonstrate to be a mirror image of the same physical subject, i.e. a reversal of a new point of view of the same three-dimensional group, is "Isaac Blessing Jacob" (P1.3), dated by Benesch and most scholars around 1640. Though undoubtedly by Rembrandt it is nothing like so wonderful a drawing as the David. It is a recurring feature of Rembrandt's drawings from mirror images that the results are not so riveting as those drawn directly from life, and this series of drawings illustrates this observation very well. Another drawing based on a subject seen in a mirror, B1065 (P1.4),
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| Caption: Benesch's note to B1065 (pl.4) gives amazing confirmation of Rembrandt's actual activity. Benesch writes: "A figure has been deleted with wash, I.e. the old lady has been moved by Rembrandt to improve the composition of this drawing." |
is also very different in quality from those directly observed; its impressionistic quality has led scholars to date it 1661, that is 21 years after pl.2. I am suggesting that all were done in the same year, perhaps on the same day, because, different though these drawings appear, they have a number of features in common, apart from their overt subject, most obvious among these is an old man with a beard that has a tendency to part in the middle, sitting up in bed propped up by pillows and bolsters that allow us to say it is the same bed in which we find the sick Saskia. The bed-head in plate 2 has vertical stripes in common with that in which Saskia lies. In every case a youth kneels beside the bed and an old woman stands at the head. It is easy to find sufficient likeness between the individuals involved in plate 2 ("Deathbed of David") and plate 5 (Isaac and Jacob, 1652)
to believe that they were derived from the same models. Comparison with plate 6 , another version of the Isaac and Jacob story also dated 1652, gives further grounds for this belief; note particularly Rebecca's arthritic hands, her clothes, her stick, and her features. The same old lady appears in different guises in over twenty different Rembrandt drawings. How is it possible that scholars continue to deny these facts and insist they all come from Rembrandt’s vivid imagination? It is their long-standing over estimate of the usefulness of the visual imagination. When drawing from life one might refer to the model many hundreds of times, but a vision cannot be recalled.
If we now turn to the photograph 1, in which a three-dimensional maquette based on the David and Solomon drawing is seen reflected in a mirror on the right, we find the basis of the 1640 version of "Isaac Blessing Jacob".PL 3
This link will take you to a video of the young Konstam shot by the BBC, which will make the complex details that follow easier to understand.(YouTube or in nigelkonstam.com - shot by the BBC)
Though minor variations may be observed, for instance the tilt of Isaac's head and the pose of his hands (I have also moved the figure of Solomon forward onto the platform we see under the bed in plate 2), when we consider the complexity of the spatial relationships involved and the fact that Rembrandt was dealing with moving human models, the 1640 drawing reflects the subject of the unaccepted drawing with remarkable accuracy. Perhaps the most telling touch of all is the abstracted still-life that we find between Isaac and Jacob; this occurs in precisely the place occupied by Nathan's head in the reflection. In fact, the forms in the jug indicate that it started as a head; Rembrandt must have realised that a second kneeling figure was not relevant to the story of Isaac and Jacob, and so transformed it into the still-life we see.
It is highly improbable that an artist would have introduced such an intrusive form at this focal point in the composition if they had been composing from their head. Rembrandt often drew something simply because it was there. His consistent reproduction of small and sometimes irrelevant detail has provided clues for the detective work required in these reconstructions.
Telling as this example may be, we can go further in demonstrating that both drawings were derived from the same stage set. For instance, the lighting of the maquette and its reflection seen in the photograph is that found in both the drawings. Notice the shadow round Rebecca's head in both drawings, the shadow on Isaac's upper arm in the 1640 drawing, the shadow across Jacob's chest in the same drawing. In the David and Solomon drawing the deep shadow under David's hand and the tone across Solomon's back and the side of the bed are all found on the maquette lit by a single light source, seen to be a window in pl.4.
(green arrow indicating where the figure of the old woman has been deleted; she has been moved to improve the composition of B1065 (Pl.4) otherwise all the relationships and lighting remain the same in all the drawings. Red arrows below in Photo 2 indicating reflected light and its reflection in the mirror. The fact that the pattern of light and shade on the figure is the same as that on the architecture behind her proves that the move was a second thought. )
The same source would have also illuminated the artist's work. The single light source in the photo is higher and slightly right of the camera. (It goes without saying that the viewing point for both reality and reflection is the same, i.e. one camera position equals Rembrandt’s seat in the studio.)
A structural detail that might be overlooked, for it certainly falls into the category of irrelevant detail mentioned above, is the platform which we see under the bed in plates 2 and 4. Its presence is hinted at in the other 1652 version under Rebecca's left foot in plate 5, and by the awkward gap bridged by Jacob's torso in plate 6 . One feels that his knees are inconveniently far from the bed. This platform can be demonstrated to be present in the 1640 version, though of course we can not see it. In the photograph 2, the figure of Solomon has been moved forward onto the platform. We now see Jacob reflected down to the base of his sternum as in the drawing. This is an example of Rembrandt moving his actors around, trying this and that arrangement, much as Houbraken described. "I know of no other artist who has introduced so many variations and so many different aspects of one and the same subject."
I can demonstrate the same basic relationship between plate 6 and plate 4 . That is, plate 6, which so very closely resembles the David and Solomon drawing, is seen directly and plate 4 , which looks very much as if it was observed through a dim and dusty mirror, indeed was so - furthermore Benesch's note on B1065 tells us that a figure has been deleted between the L margin and the bed (precisely where we know the old lady stood originally. Here we see Rembrandt moving his actors in order to improve the mirror composition) . See photograph 2
Looking at the drawings in plates 2,3,4,5,6, of which pl.2 is by far the most interesting because Rembrandt has spent so much time on the gestures of the two main figures that he has scuffed the paper (de-attributed in 1922); one is bound to ask some questions . All are accepted as by Rembrandt and one, pl. 2, by far the most interesting, is not. Firstly, how could anyone, however unconversant with the art of drawing, postulate that they were derived from imagination and not from a stage set? And second, how could he, Benesch, ever have come to write the catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt, how did it come to be reissued after Benesch's death and still no one since has come forward to question Benesch's general hypothesis that his drawings from nature or for compositions "are by far out-numbered by those drawings that are the result of “his continuously productive fantasy"? I would reverse that judgement: Ninety-five percent are drawn from life, in my estimation. Furthermore, those from imagination illustrate my general thesis perfectly: they are profoundly inferior to those observed.
I made the discoveries contained in this article in 1974-5. In '77. Through the intervention of Prof. E.H.Gombrich they were published in the Burlington Magazine, where one hopes they did not escape the notice of Rembrandt scholars. In so far as they have been steadily blocking my progress ever since. (For instance the substitution of this article in a magazine which would have done a lot to advance public knowledge of my views, or my book on Rembrandt was once accepted by Phaidon “with the whole editorial board behind me” but abruptly cut on receipt of a hatchet job of a reader’s report from an anonymous scholar. A simplified version is on this site ) They obviously have taken note, but they have not modified their position, nor have they advanced a single argument of note against my thesis. Yes, plate glass did not exist in Rembrandt’s day but composite mirrors certainly did, furthermore, the best were manufactured in Amsterdam .
Surely all this evidence (and plenty more has been published) of Rembrandt's use of tableaux vivants combined with contemporary evidence of the same must persuade any rational being that Rembrandt did indeed work from live model groups. Yet the army of Rembrandt scholars has failed to follow this logic and continues with their mistaken ideas of the development of his style. It is now 50 years since I first drew this to their notice. During that time Rembrandt's reputation has suffered hugely as above. In 1976 the editor of The Burlington, Benedict Nicolson wrote to me "the scholars must now get down to revising the corpus of drawings". Is it not time to push them to do so?
By their fruits they have demonstrated a level of crass incompetence and insensitivity that is not to be tolerated. By their behaviour they have demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to regulate their own affairs. If art matters at all, something must be done about it.
The power invested in those trained in art history is too great. They control buying policy in the public museums, they advise private patrons, they tend to own and man the dealer's galleries, they write criticism and "educate" public taste at all levels, they are all-powerful king-makers making and breaking artists' reputations, they hand out the prizes at biennales. That amount of power is not good for their humility and it is not good for us. Bookmakers or croupiers are not in charge of the games of chance from which they profit. How is the art market different? Why is there no outside body to supervise a game of chance where the wheel of fortune is consistently being weighted in one direction or another? Difficult as it is to bite the hand that feeds, a watch-dog committee with teeth must be created to oversee the activities of art historians and to challenge their judgements where necessary.
I have adjusted the original only to make my meaning clearer.NK Sept.2021
HISTORY OF THIS ARTICLE
Peter Fuller was a famous art critic in the the early 60s. He had been a student of John Berger whom I much admired. Fuller started a magazine called “Modern Painters”. I wrote an article for the magazine about Rembrandt and he asked me to enlarge it to celebrate Rembrandt’s birthday due in a few months time. I did so and the article was quite long and naturally extremely critical of Rembrandt scholarship of the day. I sent off the article and he was very pleased with it. Unfortunately he died in a car accident (1990) before it was published. The magazine continued after his death but it was taken over by art historians, who naturally disliked what I had to say about scholars so it never got published. They published instead a very dull article about Rembrandt written by Prof. Michael Podro, who had earlier written to congratulate me on my approach to Rembreandt. He had studied with Gombrich and was present when Gombrich opened my second exhibition at Imperial College saying - Konstam has prepared a great feast for art historians at which he invites us to eat our own words.
There is a lot in the behaviour of scholars that lends itself to conspiracy theory. But it is also easy to imagine oneself within a herd where silence is the rule and to break that silence is to expose the herd to considerable discomfort at minimum and probably worse. To maintain that silence is understandable if not noble. This is passive conspiracy but if you actively participate in silencing the whistle-blower you are a conspirator, conspiring against the discussion on which progress in understanding depends. Art history is stuck in a medieval mind-set: their refusal to discuss my evidence for long-standing mistakes in perception of important moments in art – Rembrandt, Velásquez, Vermeer or the Parthenon sculptures, is disgraceful and long term harmful to our civilisation.
Tilting at Windmills
For N. K.
When I look back at my attempts to set a mission
For my students of design: to think about the waste
Of using up their only life on earth as hacks,
Paid to generate consumer wallet-itch without end,
Tilting at windmills is how I have to think of them.
And yet it was my sculptor friend
Who took to Don Quixote as a major theme.
His exploits in the world of art may now be seen in Tuscany
In a hilltop town that he’s made very much his own.
Outside the church there stands his ‘Good Samaritan’
Other major works are set up in the square;
His studio in its old frantoio on the walls of the paese,
Testament to a lifetime spent in guerrilla war
On Establishment historians of painting and of sculpture.
His many works in Casole
Will rate a spot in tourist guides one day:
‘Do look in if you’re passing near,
You’ll find his presence everywhere.
An Englishman abroad who made his mark there
And gave a humble village an appetite for culture.’
The legacy of my heroics is much smaller and contained
Within the covers of a book. It’s easy to overlook.
But you don’t have to go to Italy to see it!
The British Academy has just held a conference on Ancient Plaster March 30th & 31st 2021 in which I presented a video and was on one discussion panel on the 31st.
I took this rare opportunity to speak about life casting and the revolutionary discovery at the British Museum that there is a big Roman contribution to the Elgin Marbles and to the surprise of all it is superior to the Greek. The conference was planned for 2020 before Covid and the final morning was scheduled as me conducting a visit to the BM. Alas that never took place but one day I hope it will be possible again.
In the event the revolution that was hinted at in the ad was never mentioned or debated but I think we won on the life casting which had previously been a "career ending" taboo. A recording of the full conference is available but I recommend particularly Lumsden and my own videos. I wrote a letter to The Guardian including my closing note on the proceedings as follows:
To the editor of The Guardian
Re. The Ancient Plaster Conference.
2.4.21
Dear Sir,
I include below my closing notes on the conference in which you will see that the courageous ambition of the conference was hijacked by the establishment scholars and recorded in tedious detail in entirety. Apart from showing surprising ignorance of elementary details of sculptural practice on the part of the experts it demonstrates just how art is misruled by them.
Further details available at www.nigelkonstam.com
Faithfully yours,
Nigel Konstam
NOTES ON THE ANCIENT PLASTER CONFERENCE
These notes may help as there was never time to answer the many questions.
1. There is no need to confuse lime plaster with with gypsum plaster although the word plaster remains the same, their properties are very different; lime plaster (as in in lath and plaster) is used in Tudor architecture and for fresco painting and pargeting. It is the same chemically as lime mortar but made with fine, sharp sand. If well maintained it is remarkably resistant to weather and has compressive strength but very little tensile strength. It has a long working time of several hours but takes weeks to attain full strength by drying.
Gypsum plaster, on the other hand, is normally used in plaster casting and has remarkable tensile strength when mixed with fibre; so is the obvious choice for building a wooden armature for a colossal statue. However it is not very resistant to weather. It has a very much faster setting time, somewhere between 3 and 30 minutes under normal circumstances. It is therefore used for life or death castings as well as normal plaster casting for which lime plaster is not at all suitable.
2. It is important to realise the difference between waste-moulding and piece-moulding, which is very complicated and time consuming and developed in plaster (see note below for a more primitive clay-piece mould) somewhere in 18th or 19th centuries to produce multiples. A waste-mould has to be smashed to free the positive made of inflexible, plaster. It is not possible to take a plaster cast off an inflexible material unless it has no under-cuts whatever. However, it is possible to take several casts in a flexible material such as wax or damp clay out of a waste-mould without breaking it so long as the undercuts are not too severe. (All my bronze portraits are cast from the original clay in this way.)
3. Martin’s alginate was invented less than 50 years ago. However, a similar process was available to the ancients - by dipping a damp, live, hand 3 or 4 times into warm wax (near the point of setting). This glove of wax can then be sliced in half while still warm with a blunt blade such as the back of a table knife, in order to free the live hand and maintain the form of the wax mould. The wax mould should be cooled in water before trying to remove it from the hand. The results filled with plaster will be very similar to Martin’s with the added advantage that the wax can be reused.
4. Though I rate Bernini as the sculptor most gifted with natural talent, I cannot believe he made the second copy of his Scipio portrait (his greatest) from memory. He had, after all, the original blemished marble to work from. I can believe it took him only a fortnight to complete the second version. His behaviour in Paris is typical of a cunning showman who was not going to show those frogs how he actually achieved his best works. Why did he make the clay sketches if not for use later? The resulting portrait was nothing like so good as the Scipio. Bernini was a great sculptor but an inveterate braggart and what he said should not be taken as the basis for the inflated ideas of the earlier imagination or visual memory which now gravely distort opinion in the history of art.
5. Most sculptors choose to design first in clay or wax and make drawings from these maquettes if required; not vice versa. Michelangelo’s Ascension drawings bear witness to this because the wonderful Christ figures are clearly observed from a modified, probably wax figurine; while the subsidiary figures (from imagination) are perfectly horrid. Ancient geniuses fed their imagination with reality. (see “Michelangelo’s Models” or www.saveRembrandt.org)
6. Though I normally carve-direct into stone without previous design; for a large group, such as my “Good Samaritan” I made a papier-mache actual size model; first to try on site and then for a team of assistants to measure in the studio in order to remove masses of stone from the 12 ton block with diamond saws and then with more refined geometry and pneumatic hammers, before I the sculptor, need come on the scene to finish by eye, detail way beyond that on the paper model. In the 19thC the plaster model would be so detailed that the sculptor needed no hand in the marble, though doubtless some would choose to participate.
7. At the conference itself I pointed out that the two demonstrations of carving with geometry were stultifying 19thC inventions; where the Roman method using a measuring boss, callipers and plumb line pushed the sculptor’s thoughts towards Platonic solids and thus became the backbone of European drawing (citing Mantegna, Masaccio. Holbein. Rembrandt, Degas and Giacometti as examples. (see my article in Apollo, Aug. 1972)
CONCLUSION
It was a pity that no time at all could be found to discuss the ample evidence I had produced in my video for the the revision of art history through the comparison of the Dionysus figure (Greek) with the Ilissos figure on the west pediment of the Parthenon, which I hold to be Roman, in agreement with the earlier opinion of Richard Payne Knight. Those of you who may have been attracted by the advertisement “ the conference has the potential to revolutionise the entire field of Greek and Roman sculpture” should make known your disappointment and organise a further conference to that end.
We can at least hope that the discussion of life-casting will in future be allowed in archaeology circles as a result of this conference.
(In reviewing my contribution to the conference I would like to correct my description of the making of a primitive clay piece-mould for the bronze of the Apollo of Piraeus: I meant to say press the clay against the marble (not against the bronze). Perhaps one day someone could make a video of the process together with photos of the side and back views of the bronze which so badly miscarried. The feet and ankles are cast from life)
A Plea for more realism in Art
I am deeply grateful to the internet because it has given me the possibility of publishing my discoveries in art history which has largely been denied me by the establishment. My revolutionary book on Rembrandt is only available on internet. My pamphlet “Elgin Arguments” I published myself. The curious thing is, though I have scored a good number of hits during my long presence on internet the simple truths that I purvey have had zero tolerance or response from the establishment and little from the interested public. I takes a lot to persuade people to join a crusade but that is what is needed.
On the few occasions I have published in the prestigious journals it is because I have been sponsored or assisted by an establishment figure who could not be denied. Nonetheless, the prestige of Gombrich. Moran or Hoffmann have not earned me the response to a strong challenge to accepted ideas those highly esteemed persons had recognised and backed.
I have received only one near rational criticism of my Rembrandt mirror proofs in 48 years since I made them available in 1974, That was the observation that mirrors of the size I have calculated (8 foot across) did not exist in Rembrandt’s day. True but composite mirrors certainly did. Velásquez had a whole hall of mirrors at his disposal in the royal palace first in Toledo then in Madrid. Amsterdam was the leading manufacturer of mirrors in Rembrandt’s day. I have found the identical mirror to the one painted in Las Meninas in a Dutch frame in the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral. Eight such mirrors mounted together would be sufficient to see the whole figural subject matter of Las Meninas; alas, we have no record of the size of the mirrors in the Hall of Mirrors. I maintain that Las Meninas was painted in the room next door to the hall of mirrors in the royal palace in Toledo, the mirrors were then in the process of moving to Madrid. Everything fits but the position of the lighted doorway, which was in the position of the mirror as painted, and the second chandelier fitting – was placed centrally over the mirror to alter the perspective. The first chandelier fitting is in the true centre of the square room (Los Olbidados).
As a student of sculpture it was never my ambition to rewrite art history but curiosity led me to question many long held beliefs and after a lifetime of practical experience and enquiry I have amassed many truths about how pivotal masterpieces were actually achieved that should interest artists and might even be useful to them. Meanwhile the professional art historians refuse to recognise the proven truths that expose their time honoured beliefs as misconceptions.
Art history has been dogged by mythology even when written by the artists themselves. Telling tall stories is a normal part of sales technique, but much too much has been tolerated. In the last 50 years we have seen the rise to dominance of art by the professional art historians whose job is often selling art and as a result the mythology has got completely out of hand. Falsehoods harden into dogma if not corrected. Few people believe that Hercules actually performed his labours but mankind seems to love heroes on a grand scale. Superman is awe inspiring but when we apply the same aggrandisement to artists of the past it does not help our understanding of them or their techniques; in fact art mythology undermines the confidence of our present practitioners leading them to expect the same miracles from their own imagination that are falsely claimed for the old masters. This creates a gulf between past and present that is deeply destructive.
What we have admired over the centuries is normally the result of observation not imagination. The language of art is based upon our everyday experience. Old art helped us to recognise what was going on in the world: how humans express themselves non-verbally through body language. Modern art thinks it has gone beyond this commonly held language and invented a lot of abstract patterns that are without meaning, they may amuse for a time but cannot help us in life. I fear that this neglect in art is already taking its toll on human communication in life. The virtual world is partly to blame for this but body-language is no longer properly scrutinised by art historians; they have buried their heads in the pseudo-science of style.
Civilisations tend to be judged by the art they produce and for me and I guess for the silenced majority, the art in our lifetime is in steep decline. For the first time in history art is guided by the theoreticians rather than the artists and their patrons. Alas, there seems a direct relationship between the rising power of art historians and the decline of both connoisseurship and the practice of art. Little wonder that the language of discussion in art has come to be known as “art bollocks” and justly gets short shrift in the journals. It is the jargon of a tiny cottery in Britain who wield the substantial power over, income, and prestige of The Arts Council; they wield that power without scruple or proper government control. Time will almost certainly judge their investments on our behalf as laughable if not criminal. Their position at the apex of the art pyramid ensures that art education has suffered in a way that may take generations to repair, or may prove irreparable.
Art historians enjoy a prestigious position in society because their opinion, however flawed, influences the millions paid for works of art. They dress like bankers and they wield similar power without the necessary understanding. No wonder the top dogs – the Rembrandt scholars have come to judge themselves way beyond criticism and have therefore inflicted huge damage on their subject and refuse to listen when this is pointed out. (see Burlington Magazine Feb.1977 or SaveRembrandt.org).
I have a number of specific complaints against our art experts apart from their over estimation of the importance of invention. Secondly they are fixated on novelty in modern works. It is true that we have always admired any genuine innovation but most of their innovations are diversions that offer no new insights. I cannot name a single useful new cast of mind they have identified.Their novelties dilute the atmosphere of art, they degrade it to a one-night-stand on television. The language of art like any other language has to remain understandable to those who use it, only a very small percentage can afford to be new at any one time without loss of communication. Van Gogh is immediately recognisable and original but his drawing grammar is based on what he learnt from Rembrandt and his brilliant colour emerged after seeing the Impressionists and meeting Gauguin. Many artists claim to be standing on the shoulders of their predecessors; like scientists we build on the work of others. A sensible way forward is best decided by the artists over time rather than the art historians. They have made a terrible mess in the short time of their dominance. The most famous art movement is called the Renaissance meaning Rebirth. My own art often finds inspiration in what I see in the work of others.
Genuine innovations in art arrive rarely and are difficult to define. Rembrandt was perhaps the most original artist ever but I have to rely on my own judgement to know where it is that he is so original. I have learnt little from previous experts in this respect, and regard our present ones as an abomination with no understanding of his art or character. Group-think has taken them further from the Rembrandt we knew from his work, his statements, his teaching and from his contemporaries’ accounts than was imaginable before it has become our regular experience over the media for the last 50 years. Recently experts have wrought more havoc through their misunderstandings, than the succession of “super-artists” promoted by them, those leave us confused and rudderless but are soon forgotten.
A third complaint is related – it is their habit to attribute miracles to ancient masters that are far beyond anything achievable today. Otto Benesch who wrote the catalogue of ' drawings is explicit, speaking of Rembrandt’s biblical drawings he says “his continuously productive fantasy” produced scenes “ with such a nearness to life as if he had seen them with his own eyes.” Well I proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that he did see them in the reality that he produced in his studio for himself and his students to work from. It is obvious to any open mind but the experts are still in denial. They have to be or their expertise falls apart. Benesch insists that “invention was the strength of old art” where in his day (1957) “artists mainly rely upon a model.” See also Haverkamp Begemann’s letter to me (link) where he speaks of the 17th C imagination as if it was quite different from anything we experience today. I reasonably presume the 17th C imagination was very similar to our own; it is just that 17th C. artists had the good sense to feed their imagination on reality.
Much the same denial is happening with my rediscovery that the Elgin Marbles are half Roman replacements for the original Greek, which had been damaged by smoke. Furthermore and most surprisingly the Roman work has been regularly preferred by the experts to the Greek; exactly the reverse of their insistence that Greek art is vastly superior. Like the Rembrandt scholars, the archaeologists have remained silent in answer to these disturbing new truths. There is a summary and a video of the Greek discoveries at www.nigelkonstam.com also a pamphlet “Elgin Arguments”
When I call my findings a rediscovery that is because Richard Payne Knight pronounced they were all Roman at the time Elgin was selling his collection. Furthermore, Elgin himself left a group on the west pediment because he believed them to be Roman. I believe the whole of the west pediment is Roman. I do not rely on style there are many concrete observations such as the pattern of smoke and of weathering to aid us in making the uncomfortable leap to a new truth, however shocking.
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I WILL NOW GIVE A GEOMETRIC PROOF OF REMBRANDT'S USE OF MODELS
Here I will attempt a geometric proof of the Rembrandt discoveries found at the same internet address: - but first it is essential to understand that a mirror image is a reversal of a new view of a three dimensional group. It is quite different to the print reversal one comes across in etchings for instance; those are a purely two dimensional reversals. All the reversals I use in the many instances published have to have a three dimensional group as source. My most used example is Rembrandt’s drawing of four musicians derived from two live models and their mirror image. This is particularly telling because of the reversal of the flutes but I have found 80 further examples of the same behaviour in drawings and 20 examples of a more complex use of mirrors resulting in two separate drawings. The most extensive example of this method is in the two paintings of “The Adoration of the Shepherds” where 8 figures and a number of architectural features from the Munich version, which is observed direct, are reversed in the London reflected version. Not as single figures, the spaces between them remain constant, the whole array is accurately mirrored but for the cow and the boy with a dog. The chances of this happening without a mirror (or a computer) must be many, many millions to one. There must have been a large group and a large mirror assembled in a barn for this project, furthermore student drawings support this explanation. I think scientists would regard this as proof. The Rembrandt scholars, nonetheless, feel free to neglect it at huge cost to Rembrandt and because of his status to art today. The National Gallery briefly returned their version to the Rembrandt room after I put my research on YouTube. It had been languishing in the basement after the Rembrandt Research Project had de-attributed it. Now it is in restoration for no reason other than embarrassment!
The Remedy Otto Benesch, who wrote the catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings (Phaidon 1954) had a remarkably good eye but his ideas were often haywire; unfortunately the ideas have been followed unquestioningly by his successors. In his Rembrandt “Selected Drawings” (Phaidon 1957) Benesch gives the rational of his catalogue he states that “numerous as the studies from nature are… they are far out numbered by those that are the result of Rembrandt’s continuously productive fantasy” (p. 18.). My discovery of Rembrandt’s use of live models and mirrors decisively reverses Benesch’s statement: almost all are drawn from life. Benesch’s catalogue is nonetheless the best basis for future scholarship. He goes astray when he tries to date drawings. He invented a chronology of Rembrandt drawings which I disproved in my Burlington article (Feb.1977). Differences that Benesch explains by Rembrandt’s evolution, I explain by the change of stimulus, whether drawn from life, from reflection or from imagination. These three categories are clear-cut and recognisable by non-specialists. The same difference between observed and imagined is often seen among artists today. My research which was supported by Gombrich and many other eminent visitors to my exhibition at Imperial College should have led to a major revision immediately; instead any revision has made the position of the experts very much worse. (See also video The Dismissal of Hagar). Benesch had to stick to his ideas of imagination rather than groups of live models in order to construct his chronology. As soon as one knows there were groups of models there his chronology becomes nonsense. Unfortunately modern scholarship has chosen to.continued with Benesch’s nonsense and is therefore deeply damaging to our understanding of Rembrandt. Furthermore, Haverkamp-Begemann along with most of his colleagues seems to believe that the fewer drawings there are to deal with the easier it will be to understand Rembrandt so they have whittled them down to 500 where Benesch believes in nearly 1500. I believe in over 2200.
Rembrandt loved drawing, it was his discovery and try-out mode, the ones we most admire are observed from life recreated in the studio. The imagined ones are quite different and at their worst in B.970 Jupiter with Philemon and Baucis, where Rembrandt sees his failure and writes a note to himself on the drawing. There are many heavy handed composition's drawings which also testify to Rembrandt’s preference for working from observation; a fact constantly repeated in the documents but entirely neglected by the scholars..
At his best Benesch has this to say about the later drawings “the figures are now composed of cubes, rhombus and cylinder forms and have clearly crystallised shape” he is referring to what I regard as the Roman influence on Rembrandt. He is also wise insofar as he advises that “to find the genuine Rembrandt it's necessary to think of his attitude to humanity” advice that recent scholarship has again neglected. Could one possibly describe Dickens’ style leaving out his attitude to humanity?
Benesch also recognises that the facial expressions in Rembrandt’s drawings are fairly standard, “it is the expression of the body that carries the message so clearly”absolutely true; this approach is of course history painting which used to be the highest ambition for artists and certainly was for Rembrandt. Alas, in my student days this positive attitude to illustration was deeply frowned upon; we had come to believe other qualities in art were more valuable - the abstract architectural quality and although this quality had been often drowned out in Victorian times by sentiment, I personally don't think the architecture is more important than human expression which is the very basis of the language of old art. I call myself a New Humanist in the hope that body-language will return as a central interest of art. Rembrandt is the greatest of all illustrators, to neglect that aspect is to grossly underestimate him. To suggest that he achieved his pre-eminence from imagination is grossly misleading.
Benesch spent a lot of time trying to persuade us that Rembrandt’s handwriting adds to the spiritual quality of his work. In fact his handwriting is very much like anyone else's. In my analysis of “Christ Raising a Sick Woman” I follow his thought process in turning a robust Christ who hoists the unfortunate woman to her feet - into Christ the miraculous healer. Nothing to do with handwriting all to do with nudging the image in the wished for direction. Rembrandt’s draughtsmanship aims at inner expression before muscularity and this is not limited to spiritual expression he is just as interested in how a group carries a body (see the comparison with Raphael or the throwing of a stone in The Stoning of St.Stephen or the thoughts of other guests in “The Unworthy Wedding Guest” all on YouTube.
Nonetheless there's a much more important complaint I have to make against art history generally and that is the long-standing neglect or underestimation of Roman form. Rembrandt owned 30 Roman portraits and filled two books with drawings of them Rembrandt’s art is entirely based on Roman form rather than Greek. His huge originality rests on his extension of the Roman tradition. While art history is constantly ridiculing Roman in comparison with the Greek art; Rembrandt did the opposite. His flying angels seem to me a deliberate dig at Raphael’s (Greek) method.
My much more recent discovery of the Roman additions to the Parthenon have strengthened the case that I have always felt but not expressed precisely before. Roman geometry developed in the process of copying, has become at least half of the European form tradition (See Masaccio, Mantegna, Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas, Giacometti) I, with my emphasis on the prime importance of observation, regard it as the better half of the European tradition, something that art history has been denying. Raphael was the master of the Greek form, suitable for invention but to me it is no more than the manipulation of a formula, which has become tired through over use, “idealised”is a poor substitute for truth. (I hope I have conveyed that idea on YouTube)
The word style is often linked with costume and there is a sense that style can be put on or changed like a suit of clothes; art history tends to treat it in this way but Stravinsky, who was a master style-changer, also said in his recorded conversations “style is the whole man” and I think Benesch was saying the same when he recommends finding the true Rembrandt through his attitudes to humanity.
Recent Rembrandt scholarship tends to confuse style with mere handwriting. The quality of marks made by Rembrandt’s various drawing implements. Chalk or charcoal make a very different mark to a quill pen or a reed pen. His pattern of form making, however remains remarkably consistent whether he is painting or drawing with a variety of implements. One must hope that art historians start thinking in terms of form rather than style. Style as they understand it is superficial and clearly wrong in Rembrandt’s case. As a generalisation artists’ style does vary as they develop but not in the rigid linear way Benesch and others suppose. The presence of a particular group of models is a far more reliable way of assigning dates than similarity of appearance to Hagar (see video linked above), which demonstrates how drawings of the same group have been separated from one another by Benesch’s system of style). The same could be said of “The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter” for instance, where drawings of the same group are dispersed by Benesch almost over Rembrandt’s entire working life. Benesch’s chronology is remarkably neat because he goes by appearance and is prepared to delete anything that interrupts his scheme; that makes it attractive but entirely misconceived. Much better to use the groups of recognisable models as the guide to approximate date aided by the dates of student paintings of the same group. Otherwise, leave the chronology to science, matching inks and paper. I am certain that Scotland Yard would do a much better job of putting Rembrandt’s drawings in order.
The word form has many meanings; in the art of drawing it usually means not physical form but the mental image of the physical. Greek Classical form uses ovoids and cylinders and in Roman more crystalline geometry (See chapter 2 of An Alternative History of Art) which I favour because it is more flexible i.e. Roman portraits, or Holbein’s portraits are far more individual than Classical Greek ones.)
When I was a student at Camberwell, Dr Vogel, who was the head of sculpture was only interested in whether one could see form or not. It usually took a year or two of study to come to understand what he was talking about but not everyone succeeded. I hope in future art historians will spend that time trying to see form. At the moment few do. They waste their time on “the quality of line!” and Benesch even believes lines contain spiritual significance - Yes, artists use lines to enclose areas. It is the way those areas stack together that creates form. Three rhombuses on a surface make a cube and this convention allows us to create more complicated three dimensional forms on a two dimensional surface (See this video, explanation at 2:48). The quality of line is irrelevant, one can do the same with areas of colour or of tone.
Benesch speaking of Rembrandt’s “important pen work” consisting of “thin whizzing lines or stronger ones with larger intervals... or the vibrant bands of delicate short hatches interspersed with slightly curving hairlines” he writes that Rembrandt had successfully studied the drawings of the Venetian Masters”. What absolute nonsense While all these observations are accurate it is quite clear that Benesch has never done hatching himself because all these marks often result from the the movement of drawing many parallel lines swiftly (known as hatching) they are purely the result of moving the hand swiftly across paper. They have nothing to do with the movement of the spirit they are purely muscular not only Venetians, everyone who does it is capable of the same kind of marks.
I have been critical of Benesch because he is by far the best published critic. The majority of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) team resigned because they could not agree on a way forward. There is no way forward they need to go back to Benesch, discarding his ideas about imagination and dating and start all over again by reading the documents. They have proved themselves incapable of reading the drawings, in spite of Rembrandt’s unique transparency. No other artist has left us a record of his “worthless” drawing as Rembrandt does deliberately. (See his flying angels link). On of the reasons artists admire him so much is his honesty in leaving a trail of different attempts. Joshua Reynolds counted 13 adjustments on his way to a final drawing now in the British Museum, which was only a part of his longer eccentric journey to the painting “Lamentation at the Foot of the Cross” (National Gallery, London – see their “Rembrandt, Art in the Making”). How this transparency could have changed into extreme distrust of Rembrandt is a long history of bloomers on the part of the scholars. The Copernicus of Art is no longer visited by students of art. Their trust has been undermined by a false history of the most trustworthy of artists.
Benesch uses the word “structure” as a weaver of fabric might use the term. He seems to have no understanding of geometric structure such as an architect or engineer might use it. That is why he has overlooked many Rembrandt masterpieces; the most obvious one is Rembrandt’s copy of a Holbein figure which actually goes further than Holbein himself in its geometrical structure, a real gem I came across in reproduction in a collection I think in The Hague. It appears in none of the books of Rembrandt’s drawings. It would be nice to have an illustration here. Another optimal example is a very important drawing of “David Appointing Solomon as his Successor” rejected by Benesch and others. In 1922 Benesch actually deattributed this wonderful drawing from a collection of drawings bought by the first Duke of Devonshire from one of Rembrandt’s most successful students) - all of which had earned high regard. I am also sorry to report that Benesch included that dreadful fake of Titus in his “Selected Drawings” of Rembrandt. After leaving the Albertina in Vienna Benesch taught at Harvard, the Dutch scholars are no better, so we must conclude that modern Rembrandt scholars have not the least idea of why artists hold drawing in such high esteem.
The fact that the experts have access to modern scientific instruments does not make them scientists. Their mind-set is medieval – what Benesch from Harvard said must be true, regardless of the overwhelming evidence against him!
Further Article on the History of Style and it's effect on Rembrandt Scholarship
The word style is most often used in connection with clothing, then it's meaning is clearly stylish. When it is associated with the art of Rembrandt it is inadequate. Yes, Rembrandt did rarely produce stylish images but the same word should not be used for those deep philosophical considerations for which he was once held in the highest regard. Rembrandt has lost a great deal of his former renown because the experts have lost sight of his ability to transmit human depth. The pseudo-science of style has pushed aside such ‘unscientific’ considerations. Until the so called experts can distinguish quality they are wasting every body's time.
We need to distinguish between the style of Rembrandt’s handwriting and his ability to plumb the depths of human motivation from physical appearances. His written notes clearly indicate that he was not interested in the kind of stylish handwriting practiced by many of his contemporaries and the marks he makes as a draftsman are equally commonplace; yet Otto Benesch whose catalogue of Rembrandt Drawings (1954) has never been surpassed spends most of his time examining the handwriting and very little on what it is Rembrandt is trying to communicate, though for the rest of us this is what has earned him extreme eminence in the artistic pantheon.
The advance of a style is usually measured by a work’s nearness to nature. This was time-honoured and beyond doubt till photography took over most of the bread and butter side of portraiture. Nonetheless, it remains the guiding spirit for many figurative artists because they educate themselves by the study of nature; portraiture being the most demanding form of that study.
Gisela Richter advanced the importance of the study of style with her studies of early Greek sculpture (1942). Her sister was an expert in anatomy and between them they made a seamless line of development from archaic towards the classical naturalism we admire today. Working with perhaps 40 or 50 examples of early Greek sculpture of uncertain date, they made a continuous development both neat and plausible – this is news we were all pleased to hear. But even as specialists like John Boardman and others admired the feat, they sounded notes of caution based on the the observation of the way an artist’s style will change from one day to the next and back again according to the instrument they happen to pick up. Clearly there are also some artists/explorers and a large majority who stick closer to traditional values; quite apart from the unequal distribution of talent. The cutting edge is by no means as clear cut as modern commentators would like us to believe. Artists can seldom agree on the right direction of advance for art. A consensus as to what is of lasting value emerges long after the many disparate but contemporary happenings in art.
In the case of Greek sculpture the Richter system is a great convenience and if not 100% true little harm is detectable in its acceptance. But when we apply the same system rigidly to Rembrandt’s drawings the harm has been exposed and is devastating. Drawings which are clearly from the same group of models are frequently separated by Benesch by half Rembrandt’s working life, leading to the belief that Rembrandt returned to the same theme, say of The Dismissal of Hagar, throughout his life as well as many other gross miscalculations of his artistic character.
We have to blame Benesch for the entirely avoidable mistake of crediting Rembrandt with the most wondrous imagination where Rembrandt’s contemporaries and he himself tell us exactly the opposite: “he would not attempt a a single brushstroke without a living model before his eyes” or “he believed one should be guided by nature, anything else was worthless in his eyes” and many similar statements from those who knew him. Why the whole band of Rembrandt scholars have chosen to follow Benesch is an unexplained mystery.
As Rembrandt seldom signed or dated his drawings (regarding them as trial runs for feeling his way into his subject) Benesch had a clear field for his invention. He produced a development for Rembrandt very similar in appearance to that produced by Richter in his 6 volume catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings, simply by assigning consecutive dates to clusters of drawings of similar appearance. His confidence was such that he claimed an accuracy of dating to within a year or two , three at most! It turns out that the drawings based on reflection usually get lumped into the time between 1648 and 1661 regardless of the fact that drawings of the same group made direct from life were of earlier dates. Alas, his followers took Benesch at his word and have followed his system to the absurd detriment of their subject. Rembrandt’s drawings have recently been reduced to about 500 where Benesch credited him with nearly 1500, and I, with over 2200, some of which I regard as his greatest masterpieces. These sea-changes in scholarship have played havoc with Rembrandt’s standing in art as many second-rate draftsmen are now credited with some of Rembrandt’s best. Ferdinand Bol being the prime beneficiary of this deplorable lack of judgement. The top scholars are bottom when it comes to seeing form; they have blinded themselves with the pseudo-science of style and could certainly benefit from instruction in drawing. It is difficult to exaggerate the damage they have done through ignorance of basic drawing problems.
It is true that handwriting can reveal the writer. But writing is a matter of using the same letters over and over again thousands of times, naturally writers form habits. An artist is more concerned with the unique quality of what he is seeing and how well he is saying it, The scholars seem to have neglected Rembrandt’s thought processes: they are so tuned to classical Greek form that they cannot see the effect of Rembrandt’s lengthy study of Roman form. This is why it is necessary to begin again with a faculty better adapted to Rembrandt’s own thinking. To erase Benesch’s claims on dating and imagination it is only necessary to visit www.saveRembrandt.org or compare the following drawings.
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B542 |
Two very similar drawings of The Brethren of Joseph asking to take Benjamin with them on their return to Egypt: B.541 and B.542 are so similar that it seems probable they were done on the same day but B.541 definitely after B.542 because there is a washed-out leg below the throne which is seen in B.542 belonging to the brother seated on the floor (wearing a crisp, leather? hat) behind his brother who is speaking (in a soft hat) to their father Jacob and speaking rather as an ambassador might speak to a stubborn King. In the sequel 541 the two brothers have changed over; the one with the crisp hat now addresses his father more man-to-man. Jacob we see more frontally and much better drawn, but in the same pose as before, he also seems much more receptive. This was probably why Rembrandt felt it necessary to attempt the subject a second time.
What the two drawings also demonstrate to us is the fact that Rembrandt had at least 7 live models posing for him for both. Live for certain because as they re-pose they also exchange items of clothing – the don’s gown and tall hat being the most obvious. Unfortunately the two drawings (in vol.3) instead of being mounted on a double page spread are either side of one page which makes it difficult to compare them. Best to compare them here.
Art Historians generally tend to overvalue invention and undervalue observation; so Benesch was reinforcing their long-standing prejudices in refusing to acknowledge Rembrandt’s reliance on observation. On the contrary, when I asked myself the question was Rembrandt drawing from life I answered that question with a resounding yes in a matter of minutes but my logic has been resisted. The real surprise for me was how lavishly he used his models as in B.541 and B.542 above. The real proof of Benesch’s mistake lies in the fact that Rembrandt often made alternative compositions from the same group by using a mirror to give him a new view and a reversal, there are nearly 100 examples (SaveRembrandt.org.uk).
In fact I was surprised at how little was imagined and how inferior were the few imagined examples. I have since come to the conclusion that when Rembrandt was drawing a flying angel, for instance, he was consciously demonstrating how “worthless” such drawing from imagination is. Rembrandt stuck to his principles with amazing tenacity; how strange that the scholars see a devious charlatan where I see an artist who risked harming his own reputation to demonstrate his belief in observed truth before elegant invention.
Diana - Sometimes pushing the idea to extremes, this etching caused a much debated scandal.
His first essay in modern perspective has been the subject of 5 other attempts to explain his procedure. This one is to be preferred because it follows Manetti’s description closely and succeeds in tying down the 3 dimensional world on a surface.