Rembrandt intime — Musée Jacquemart-André — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 16, 2016 → January 23, 2017

Based on the three masterpieces in the Musée Jacquemart-André, the Pilgrims at Emmaus, the Portrait of Princess Amalia van Solms and the Portrait of Doctor Arnold Tholinx, the exhibition comprises around twenty pictures and thirty graphic works, thanks to a series of exceptional loans from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg or the National Gallery in London.

As the uncontested master of Dutch art in the seventeenth century, Rembrandt was one of the greatest artists of his era and excelled in three fields: painting, engraving, and drawing. He tirelessly experimented with different techniques to translate his vision of mankind and the world around him. Extreme realism was complemented by mysticism and, despite his virtuosity, he was not tempted by facility.
Possessing remarkable creative power, Rembrandt’s works explore the destiny of mankind as a whole, while focusing on representations of his inner circle. The artist represented his family and close friends—such as his wife Saskia, his last mistress Hendrickje Stoffels, and his son Titus—in numerous studies he executed throughout his life, along with works in which he was the subject; he perfected the art of the self-portrait.

Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart acquired three of Rembrandt’s paintings, which to this day are incontestable masterpieces: the Pilgrims at Emmaus (1629), the Portrait of Princess Amalia van Solms (1632), and the Portrait of Doctor Arnold Tholinx (1656). Each of these three works illustrates a different and fundamental phase in Rembrandt’s creative career : his early years in Leiden, the rapid success of the first years in Amsterdam, and his artistic maturity. The idea emerged of complementing these pictures with other contemporary works by the artist—paintings, engravings, and drawings—, to gain a better understanding of the extent of Rembrandt’s genius and his genesis as a painter.

By exploring the key phases in Rembrandt’s career, the exhibition retraces the artist’s stylistic development and highlights the intimate side of his creative process. Visitors are therefore able to gain a better understanding of his artistic practices as well as his biography, as Rembrandt’s life was entirely interlinked with his work.