Tim Marlow TV - Kenneth Clark TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Laura Cumming TV - Simon Schama TV - Fake or Fortune TV - Rembrandt - Vincent van Gogh - Herbert Read - George Bernard Shaw - Paul Valery - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Britain’s Lost Masterpieces TV - Andrew Marr TV -
Boston Museum: The three Rembrandts they took were priceless. One was The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Art of the Heist s1e1: The World’s Biggest Heist, 2007
On December 22nd 2000 three of the world’s greatest art treasures were stolen from the National Museum in Stockholm. Together the Rembrandt and two Renoir paintings were valued at $50,000,000. Art of the Heist s1e6: The Big Sting
Rembrandt’s is perhaps the most familiar face in Western art. He painted, sketched and etched it over and over again as a way of exploring the range of human expression and emotion, and as a way of chronicling a life lived and a body growing old. More than any other artist Rembrandt makes us aware of our own mortality. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e11: Rembrandt, 2003
There were over seventy-five self-portraits made ... About 10% of Rembrandt’s total output. ibid.
He was a popular master and had numerous paying apprentices. But despite his increasing success and recognition, his experience on the home front was tragic. ibid.
Rembrandt’s vision and genius as an artist was undeniable. But his powerfully psychological portraits began to draw some criticism. ibid.
He was particularly demanding of his sitters. ibid.
He left only his clothes and a few artist’s materials. But he also left an immense body of work that has never been surpassed in its insight into the human condition. An artist who portrayed himself and the world as it really was rather than it might like to see itself. Who could paint something close to perfection. But who celebrated the physical imperfection. ibid.
Genuinely a once in a lifetime show entitled Rembrandt: The Late Works … Rembrandt is unquestionably one of the greatest artists ever to have wielded a brush. Tim Marlow, Great Art s1e4: Rembrandt, ITV 2018
Rembrandt’s dream of becoming a history painter was being realised … Rembrandt was proving he could turn his hand to anything. ibid.
They also got Rembrandt. Rembrandt was the great poet of that need for truth. And that appeal to experience which had begun with the Reformation. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 8/13: The Light of Experience, BBC 1969
His etchings are the fullest communication any artist has made since Durer’s engravings. ibid.
Rembrandt reinterpreted the Bible in the light of human experience. But it’s an emotional response based on the belief of the revealed truth. ibid.
Rembrandt was a classic Baroque hero. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s II, BBC 2013
Of all the Baroque masters, it was Rembrandt who evolved the most revolutionary technique and who seemed to grow into the Italians’ spiritual heir. Where others needed five touches he was using one, and so the brushstrokes had begun to separate and could sometimes only be properly read from a distance. The exact imitation of form was being replaced by the suggestion of it: to some of his contemporaries, therefore, his paintings began to look unfinished. It was from the Venetians that he had learned to use a brown ground so that his paintings emerged from dark to light, physically as well as spiritually. Yet, despite a palette that was limited even by seventeenth century standards, he was renowned as a colourist for he managed to maintain a precarious balance between painting tonally, with light and shade, and painting in colour. Just as form was suggested rather than delineated, so the impression of rich colour was deceptive. Never before had a painter taken such a purely sensuous interest and delight in the physical qualities of his medium, nor granted it a greater measure of independence from the image. Waldemar Januszczak, in Techniques of the Great Masters of Art
Rembrandt: a one-man show for our benefit. Laura Cumming, Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC 2013
Rembrandt: You’re a painter. What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Disgrace? Derision? No, the worse thing – you have to cut up your masterpiece. What had brought Holland’s greatest painter to this moment of artistic suicide? Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rembrandt, BBC 2006
He does Us. Flesh and Blood. You and Me. Art that exists to tell the truth of the human condition. ibid.
And portraits. Spectacular portraits ... Pictures. Especially pictures of themselves ... Look at this: Rembrandt’s portrait of an eighty-three year old woman. ibid.
Rembrandt looks behind the face: and this is why his portraits touch us like nobody else’s. ibid.
All his life Rembrandt seemed to love the filmy muck of his paint. ibid.
Rembrandt ... This painting will bring us within touching distance of one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Fake or Fortune? s1e4 Rembrandt, BBC 2011
Lot 185 Rudd’s Auctioneers, Cape Town: Follower of Rembrandt: Portrait of a Man in Oriental Costume. Oil on Panel 49 x 37 cm. Approx £800 – £1,200. ibid.
Rembrandt became famous as the master of the human face. ibid.
It is estimated that by the end of the war one third of all the world’s art treasures had been looted by the Nazis. ibid.
So much was stolen it is estimated that art worth up to £20,000,000,000 remains missing. And the Nazis stole art not only from the Jews but from anyone they considered to be an enemy of the state. ibid.
Choose only one master – Nature. Rembrandt
Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know. Rembrandt
Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. Rembrandt is truly called a magician ... that’s not an easy calling. Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo October 1885
Rembrandt was himself a universal spirit, and this spirit informs everything that he painted, so that a biblical legend, a carcass of an ox, a naked woman, his own self-portrait – all stand as symbols of an all-embracing sympathy. Perhaps only Shakespeare in another art has that kind of universal intelligence. Herbert Read
I believe in Michelangelo, Valàsquez and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma
He can blend, like no one else, reality with mystery, the bestial with the divine, the most subtle and powerful craftsmanship with the greatest, the loneliest depths of feeling that painting has ever expressed. Paul Valery, Degas Danse Dessin
He’s not going quietly. Not with a slow fade – just the opposite. Schama on Rembrandt BBC 2014
Rembrandt hadn’t seen anything yet ... masterpiece after masterpiece. ibid.
In 1656 he lost everything he cared about in bankrupt ruin. Even his house would go. ibid.
The idea that Rembrandt couldn’t draw is absurd. ibid.
Rembrandt too at the end is quite alone. ibid.
Rembrandt: he painted more self-portraits than any previous artist. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries II: Boom and Bust, BBC 2013
Everyone agrees that the person in the portrait is Rembrandt. But it’s not clear who painted the picture … thought to be a later copy. Britain’s Lost Masterpieces s3e1: Devon, BBC 2018
The panel would have been seasoned and ready for use in the late 1620s, exactly when Rembrandt would have been working in Leiden. ibid.
Our painting came from at least the workshop of the artist we hope painted it. ibid.
Here in Amsterdam there is a canvas loved by the Dutch like no other … there hangs Rembrandt’s world-famous and utterly stupendous Night Watch ... a national treasure. Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr s2e3: Night Watch by Rembrandt, Channel 4 2021