They are Rembrandts!
Title: The Crusader, 1659-1661
Artist: Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: Statens Museum for Kunst
Painting recently attributed to Rembrandt
Image Courtesy: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Statens Museum for Kunst
Copenhagen, Denmark
through May 14, 2006
Three years of studies and painstaking effort of an array of international scholars have given the Statens Museum for
Kunst the impetus to declare that they are the owners of two 'new' Rembrandt
paintings. The SMK owns an impressive collection of prints and drawings created
by the Dutch master along with these two works. Both are now on display in an
exhibit entitled Rembrandt? The Master and His Workshop.
The Crusader
Nearly one hundred years ago, in 1911, The Crusader was found in a corner of Fredensborg Castle by the Rembrandt connoisseur and then director of Statens Museum for Kunst, Karl Madsen. The painting had been placed in temporary storage. Madsen was
enthusiastic that this was a Rembrandt but his beliefs were met with decades of skepticism and in 1969 it was rejected as a Rembrandt.
Current studies have determined that The Crusader is a sketch for The Knight with the Falcon,
which is in the permanent collection of Göteborgs Konstmuseum. X-rays have backed up this theory demonstrating
that the underlying layers of paint are built up in a manner that is typical of Rembrandt. It is believed that the painting is
of the Dutch Saint Bavo. The subject has the convincing oscillation between the precise and the spontaneous that is so typical of Rembrandt.
It does demonstrate the pastose manner of painting that was a characteristic of the artist's late work.
It should be acknowledged that there
are indications that portions of the painting were done by one of Rembrandt's students. This was a common practice at the master's workshop.
Similarly to the discovery of The Crusader, Study of an Old Man in Profile was also
found by Madsen at Fredensborg Castle though this treasure was unearthed in a storage attic
in 1899. Rembrandt scholars were skeptical of this attribution from approximately 1933 onwards. The main reason
doubt was cast on its authenticity as a Rembrandt was the coarse style of painting. At the time of the investigation the scholars found it difficult to reconcile this coarseness with what was then believed the meticulous and carefully finished style of Rembrandt's early works.
Study of an Old Man in Profile
Title: Study of an Old Man in Profile, c. 1630
Artist: Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669)
Medium: Oil on Wood
Permanent Collection: Statens Museum for Kunst
Painting recently attributed to Rembrandt
Image Courtesy: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Rembrandt has long been studied and recently art historians have accepted from the evidence that during the artist's early career, in Leiden, Rembrandt often experimented with both broader and varied brushstrokes that is a characteristic of this painting. The young Rembrandt often did these things with his
practice pieces of which this study is believed to be. X-ray studies demonstrate
the proof in the pudding given they illustrate the old man's head was in fact
painted over another head, which appears in several of Rembrandts' paintings from those years. As well studies of the wooden panel have allowed historians to trace the wood to Rembrandt in terms of both geography and time.
It is a credit to the knowledge base of Karl Madsen that his beliefs have borne fruit so many years after he first proposed these theories to his discoveries. Modern
technology have proven beyond any shadow of doubt what Madsen believed of his two discoveries of nearly a century ago.
They are Rembrandts!
Rembrandt? The Master and His Workshop
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen:
February 4 - May 14, 2006
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