Rembrandt van Rijn

Considered the greatest artist of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn revolutionised painting with an exceptional command of light, shadow and brushwork, possessing his scenes and subjects with uncompromising realism and ambitious psychological intensity.

Born in Leiden in 1606, Rembrandt made his name after 1631 in the booming port of Amsterdam, painting portraits, Biblical scenes, landscapes and animal studies for a newly minted mercantile class. Although he never went abroad his art was indebted to the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, whose innovative use of chiaroscuro, developed around the start of the century, had recently made way to Holland via the travelling Dutch artists Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen.

Following Amsterdam’s Protestant Reformation of 1578, commissions from the church dried up — instead Rembrandt had to look to civic bodies for patronage. An order placed circa 1639 resulted in his most famous painting: a huge, dynamic group portrait of a local militia emerging from a dark alley called The Night Watch (1642, Rijksmuseum).

Approximately 50 of Rembrandt’s 300 or so paintings were self-portraits, spanning the entirety of his 40-year career. He elevated the medium to new heights of autobiography, adopting unconventional facial expressions, props and costumes to convey his ever changing moods. Over time, he also developed an impasto technique, applying thick layers of paint with strokes of a palette knife or the bristles of his brush to build up a tactile surface of his aging, ruddy and wrinkled face.

Rembrandt was also a prolific printer. Hugely experimental with his range of mark-making and the tonal qualities of the medium, he produced some 300 etchings and drypoints, which were widely circulated around Europe during his lifetime and are still considered a benchmark of the skill.

Despite his success, Rembrandt squandered his fortune, spending compulsively on art and antiques. In 1656 he declared bankruptcy and surrendered his assets in an attempt to settles his debts. In 1669, at the age of 63, he died penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave. Today, his legacy endures. In 2009 Christie’s sold Rembrandt’s Portrait of a man with arms akimbo for £20,201,250, setting a world auction record for the artist.