Rembrandt. The Painter at Work

Rembrandt's paintings have been admired throughout centuries because of their artistic freedom. But Rembrandt was also a craftsman whose painting technique was rooted the tradition. This sweeping examination of Rembrandt's oeuvre is the result of a lifelong search for the artist's working methods, his intellectual approach to painting and the way in which his studio functioned. Ernst van de Wetering demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to tackle questions about authenticity and other art-historical issues. Approximately 350 illustrations, half of which are reproduced in colour, make this book into a monumental tribute to one of the worlds most important painters.

Table of Contents:
Preface, I Introduction: Rembrandt –an Alchemist?, II Painting Materials and Working Methods of the Young Rembrandt, III Lost Drawings and the Use of Erasable Drawing Boards and ‘Tafeletten’, IV The Creation of the Pictorial Idea V The Canvas Support, VI The Palette; on the Relationship between Style and Painting Technique, VII Rembrandt’s Brushwork and Illusionism; an Art-Theoretical Approach, VIII Rembrandt’s Method of Working in the ‘Night Watch’ and his Late Paintings, IX The Search for Rembrandt’s Binding Medium, X The Impact of Time and Rembrandt’s Ideas on Colour and Tone, XI Perspectives on the Quality of Rembrandt’s Art, Biographical Data, and Chronological ,List of Rembrandt’s Works ,Reproduced in this Book, Notes, Bibliography, Glossary, Index, Concordance, Photo Acknowledgements

About the Author :

Ernst van de Wetering (1938) was professor of art history. He became a team-member of the Rembrandt Research Project in 1968 and its chairman in 1993. Originally trained as a painter and art-historian, he worked from 1969-1987 in the Amsterdam based Central Research Laboratory of Objects of Art and Science. From 1987-2002 he taught at the University of Amsterdam. In 2003/2004 he was Slade Professor at the University of Oxford. He was considered one of the world's foremost specialists on Rembrandt and his work. In 1997, he published the widely acclaimed monograph Rembrandt: The Painter at Work (2nd ed. 2008). 2014 saw the publication of his monumental oeuvre catalogue Rembrandt's Paintings Revisited: A Complete Survey; the concluding volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings.