View
226
Download
0
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
Grounds in Rembrandt’s workshop and in the paintings by
his contemporaries
Karin Groen
Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage
Rembrandt Research Project
Research Kühn 1962 to 1965
• 48 painting attributed to Rembrandt
• 10 shop works or contemporary copies
• 38 other Dutch painters from the 17th to 19th century
• By 1965, the grounds of 122 paintings on canvas and panel from various periods ascribed to Rembrandt had been examined.
Thin sections of
the Night Watch
Incident and transmitted ligth
Incident and transmitted ligth
Transmitted, polarized light
New sampling necessary for obtaining insight into the occurrence and distribution of the quartz ground!
Criteria for sampling: • Paintings by Rembrandt and those ascribed to him:
As many works on canvas as possible from Bredius (1935)
• Pictures by Amsterdam painters who had nothing to do with Rembrandt
Pictures made between 1640 (Night Watch)and 1669 (Rembrandt’s death)
Results
• 160 canvas paintings investigated• 125 of these made after 1640• 48 on a quartz ground: almost half of the
production• None of the 60 non-Rembrandt paintings
made in Amsterdam 1640-1669 has a quartz ground
• Canvasses with a quartz ground were used exclusively in Rembrandt’s workshop
• These canvasses must have been prepared in Rembrandt’s workshop
This find provides a strong supplementary criterion for attributing paintings:
Every Rembrandtesque painting on a quartz ground derives from Rembrandt’s studio !!
Rembrandtesque ‘Self-portraits’
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart c.1659
Corpus IV17
Fogg Art Museum Cambridge Mass. c.1660
Corpus IV22
National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne c.1660
Corpus IV21
What could have been the reason for Rembrandt using quartz grounds?
Quartz ground is clay with a high proportion of ground up sand
River clay as used by potters and for making bricks, recommended for priming canvases in written sources, abroad.
Clay for bricks and pottery under the microscope
Old sea clay, Makkum
River clay, from quarry for bricks
River clay, from quarry for bricks, Bruggen, near border Germany
Clay along the Old Rhine
Recommended