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Drawings, Individual Artists, Benelux Art
Rembrandt Drawings by Seymour Slive β€” book cover

Rembrandt Drawings

by Seymour Slive, Harmenszoon van Rijn Rembrandt
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Overview


Although the extensive literature on Rembrandt could fill a small library, there has been no up-to-date survey of his extraordinary achievement as a draftsman. Renowned Rembrandt scholar Seymour Slive fills this void with his scrutiny of some 150 drawings culled from a corpus of about eight hundred by the master. The drawings, reproduced in color, are accompanied by etchings and paintings by Rembrandt and others, including Leonardo and Raphael. Unlike other publications of Rembrandt's drawings, they are here arranged thematically, which makes his genius crystal clear. Individual chapters focus on self-portraits, portraits of family members and friends, the lives of women and children, nudes, copies, model and study sheets, animals, landscapes and buildings, religious and mythological subjects, historical subjects, and genre scenes. Slive further discusses possible doubtful attributions, which account for the considerable reduction from earlier times in the number of drawings now ascribed to the master.

Synopsis

Although the extensive literature on Rembrandt could fill a small library, there has been no up-to-date survey of his extraordinary achievement as a draftsman. Renowned Rembrandt scholar Seymour Slive fills this void with his scrutiny of some 150 drawings culled from a corpus of about eight hundred by the master. The drawings, reproduced in color, are accompanied by etchings and paintings by Rembrandt and others, including Leonardo and Raphael. Unlike other publications of Rembrandt's drawings, they are here arranged thematically, which makes his genius crystal clear. Individual chapters focus on self-portraits, portraits of family members and friends, the lives of women and children, nudes, copies, model and study sheets, animals, landscapes and buildings, religious and mythological subjects, historical subjects, and genre scenes. Slive further discusses possible doubtful attributions, which account for the considerable reduction from earlier times in the number of drawings now ascribed to the master.

Choice

"This beautifully written and produced book is the perfect introduction to Rembrandt''s drawings for general readers and students alike...Highly Recommended."

About the Author, Seymour Slive

Seymour Slive, an expert on seventeenth-century Dutch art, is Gleason Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University and former director of the Fogg Museum there.

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Editorials

Choice

"This beautifully written and produced book is the perfect introduction to Rembrandt''s drawings for general readers and students alike...Highly Recommended."

The Art Book

"This book will long provide the touchstone and primer on Rembrandt drawings for scholars and amateurs alike."

Library Journal

These two books make an excellent pendant pair. Slive (emeritus professor, Harvard; author of catalogues raisonnΓ©s on Frans Hals and Jacob van Ruisdael) presents over 150 drawings accepted by experts as authentic while Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils represents 30 years of Getty-sponsored scholarship on the 40-year life of Rembrandt's studio. Signed catalog entries are authored by several Rembrandt scholars. Both lavishly illustrated books introduce the reader to Rembrandt's life and artistic style and to the studio/apprentice system of training artists in his day. Rembrandt's students began by copying as closely as possible the master's work for practice in improving their own abilities. Later, when their skills warranted, apprentices also copied the master's work to sell, not as forgeries but as lower-priced copies. This resulted in the survival of almost identical works from Rembrandt's and his students' hands. Just as Rembrandt stored his own collection, Rembrandt Drawings is thematically arranged by subject including women, women and children, religious subjects, buildings, and more. Slive describes each theme and how the drawings within each theme relate to one another, Rembrandt's style, and contemporary events. Drawings by Rembrandt juxtaposes two or more Rembrandt drawings with those of his pupils and discusses the historical and stylistic evidence used by historians to identify correctly the artist. Both books include time lines, indexes, bibliographies, and locations of works in museums. VERDICT Written in a relaxed, easy-to-read style, both books will prove useful to studio artists, art history students, and more-than-interested general readers.β€”Nancy J.Mactague, Aurora Univ., IL

Book Details

Published
December 1, 2009
Publisher
Getty Publications
Pages
252
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780892369768

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