Experimentation: Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam

If Rembrandt were to have a motto, it would have been ‘work from  life’.  In other words:  observe  your subject very carefully.  This way he  was able to  very convincingly depict a group of lonely trees  on a hill. You can almost hear  the  approaching  wind rustling through the leaves. But Rembrandt was certainly not the only one with strong  observation  skills. In the exhibition you will see prints by artists from the 17th to the 20th century, who all put their own spin on the same subject.  Every print includes a tree,  yet it is never the same.

Tronies  were  very popular  in the 17th century. They are portraits of models that portray a  specific  type  or  an  emotion. Rembrandt was  a master  at making  tronies. Contemporary artist Glenn Brown (1966) took Rembrandt’s  tronies  as the basis for his own series. On his iPad he transformed Rembrandt’s  artworks into a wild interplay of lines. He then made an etching of the new  tronie.  Finally, he superimposed two etchings and made the prints you see in the exhibition.