YOUNG REMBRANDT

A Dutch biographer and literary critic re-creates the textures of Rembrandt's world.

Drawing on the significant resources of the Rembrandt Research Project, Rembrandt Documents Project, and the multivolume Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings as well as histories and archival material, Blom offers an assured, discerning biography. The author illuminates the esteemed artist’s early life, beginning in Leiden, where Rembrandt was born in 1606, and ending in Amsterdam, where he painted his “breakthrough” work, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, in 1632. Blom creates a multifaceted view of Leiden, which had emerged from political siege, famine, and plague to become Holland’s prosperous second city and was the place where Rembrandt grew up, studied, and worked until he moved to the Dutch capital in 1631. The son of a malt-miller, Rembrandt was restless, strong-willed, and ambitious; enrolled in the University of Leiden when he was 14, he left after two years, possibly because of religious strife besetting the institution. His parents supported his art apprenticeships in Leiden and briefly in Amsterdam, where he focused on history painting, copying his teacher’s works. Blom follows Rembrandt’s artistic evolution, honing a style of etching notable for its “looseness, bravura, and ostensible nonchalance” and experimenting with self-portraits “to see how different emotions, moods and temperaments were expressed in the face.” Included among more than 100 illustrations are many self-portraits, images that serve as “a kind of autobiography.” Along with social, cultural, political, and religious contexts for Rembrandt’s life, Blom details the nitty-gritty of making art, such as the complicated, time-consuming process of grinding pigments and improvising paint tubes from knotted pig bladders. As Rembrandt became increasingly well-known and admired, his work was purchased and commissioned by members of the court. The author notes, however, that he died alone and destitute; by 1669, his work had gone out of fashion.

A fresh, well-researched, nuanced portrait.