Rembrandt Quotes - page 3
Quote in Rembrandt's letter to Constantijn Huygens (Amsterdam, 12 January 1639) on 3 paintings commissioned (in 1635 and started by Rembrandt already in 1635/36) by the imperial court, as cited in Painters on Painting (1963) by Eric Protter, p. 78 / Dutch original text in The Rembrandt Documents, Walter Strauss & Marjon van der Meulen - Abaris Books, New York 1979, p. 161.
Rembrandt
Fine colour implies a unified relationship, in which each part is subordinate to the whole, and the transitions between them are felt to be as precious and beautiful as the colours themselves. In fact, the colours themselves must be continuously modified and broken as part of the transition. Ruskin said in his Elements of Drawing, "Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel-pit, a little whitening, and some coal dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust." In many works by the greatest colourists - Rembrandt and Watteau are examples - there are very few identifiable colours.
Kenneth Clark
He [Goya] once declared that his real masters were Vélasquez, Rembrandt and Nature. Vélasquez of course he knew intimately being surrounded in Madrid.. .He would have known Rembrandt only through prints, since so little work of the Dutch master's painted work has made its way to Spain.
Francisco Goya
Also, the son of a miller [= Rembrandt] in Leiden is esteemed highly, though prematurely. Elyas Veldenus [= Esaias van der Velde ] is an elegant painter, though unimportant, now residing at the Hague. The rector Scrivelius showed me his portrait, very lifelike on a panel by the Haarlem painter Frans Hals.
Rembrandt
Due to their parents' straitened circumstances, the youths [Rembrandt and Jan Lievens, living in Leiden, then] were compelled to take teachers whose fees were modest. Were these teachers to be confronted with their pupils today, they would feel just as abashed as those teachers who gave Virgil his first lessons in poetry, Cicero in rhetoric and Archimedes in mathematics. Let it however be said, with due respect for everyone's capacities and without detracting from anyone (for what is it to me?): these two owe nothing to their teachers but everything to their aptitude. Had they never received any tuition but been left to their own devices and suddenly been seized by the urge to paint, I am convinced that they would have risen to the same heights as they indeed have. It would be wrong to think that others have led them to this point.
Rembrandt
I stand firm: neither Protogenes, Apelles nor Parrhasius ever came up with the idea, nor, if they were to return to earth could they produce anything like this, created by a young, as yet beardless Hollander [Rembrandt, c. 1631], a miller, what he has combined in one figure and created in its entirety. It fills me with astonishment even as I say it. Congratulations Rembrandt!. ..the achievement of a Dutchman who has never ventured outside the walls of his native city.
Rembrandt
Explanatory version: Ah Rembrandt, try to paint Cornelis Anslo's voice / What one sees of his appearance is so little of him / What you can't see of him you can learn through hearing. / Those wanting a complete impression of him will have to hear him (preach). (transl. Aernout Hagen, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam)
Rembrandt
They are both [Rembrandt's second wife Hendrickje and his son Titus very much in need of aid and assistance in this enterprise.. ..[and because] no one is more suitable for this purpose than the afore-mentioned Rembrandt van Rhijn [Rembrandt himself would live with them in the house on the Rozengracht, board and lodging supplied, paid for by supplying artworks for the inventory].
Rembrandt
In a nicely set up little work by Rembrandt of 'John the Baptist preaching', I can remember seeing a wonderful attention in (the faces) of the listeners, in all sorts of positions, this was really praiseworthy. But one could also see how a dog indecently jumps on a bitch. You can say that this happens and is normal, but I say this is an abominable impropriety in this story. But I want to state here that this scene belongs more to a preaching by the dog-like Diogenes than by John the Baptist.. .Pictures like this serve to illustrate the stupidity of the Master and become even more ridiculous as they drift into ever more trivial additions.
Rembrandt
With regard to art he [Rembrandt] was rich with ideas, so that you frequently see him making a great number of different sketches of one and the same object, full also of changes in the figures and poses as well as the arrangement of the clothing; for which he is to be praised above all others – especially above those who employ such figures and clothing in their work as if they were twins.
Rembrandt
I am very sure that if Rembrandt had held himself down to his studio practice (drawing every figure nude before putting clothing on them) he would not have either that power of pantomime nor that power over effects which makes his scenes so genuinely the expression of nature.. ..the further I go on in life the more I feel within me that truth is what is most beautiful, and most rare.. ..[this] is to be found again in Rembrandt's mysterious conception of his subjects, in the deep naturalness of expressions and of gestures.
Rembrandt
A painting by Rembrandt not only stops the time that made the subject flow into the future, but makes it flow back to the remotest ages. By means of this operation Rembrandt achieves solemnity. He thus discovers why, at every moment, every event is solemn: he knows it from his own solitude.
Rembrandt
Kolakowski, as we will see, has clearly depicted the religious life and the forms of community constructed by the cultured strata of the Dutch bourgeoisie. Spinoza lives in this world, with a vast network of simple and sociable friendships and correspondences. But for certain determinate strata of the bourgeoisie the sweetness of the cultured and sedate life is accompanied, without any contradiction, by an association with a capitalist Power ('potestas'), expressed in very mature terms. This is the condition of a Dutch bourgeois man. We could say the same thing for the other genius of that age, Rembrandt van Rijn. On his canvases the power of light is concentrated with intensity on the figures of a bourgeois world in terrific expansion. It is a prosaic but very powerful society, which makes poetry without knowing it because it has the force to do so.
Rembrandt