At a time when ‘selfies’ are throwaway bits of self-marketing, Justin Reay takes us back four-hundred years to C17th Amsterdam, and the quieter, more introspective world of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.  Rembrandt worked mainly in Amsterdam as a painter and print-maker, engaging in all genres from religious subjects to landscapes, and large-scale group portraits to intimate domestic scenes. His drawings and etchings are masterly expositions of economical line combined with intense tonality.  Achieving success and wealth early, Rembrandt’s life was marred by personal tragedy and financial hardship, but his work was always highly regarded, even when his developing style transcended the mimetic realism of his contemporaries. With such a large and varied oeuvre to consider, Justin concentrates in this talk on the revealing portraits and painfully honest self-portraits which help to forge Rembrandt’s reputation as one of the finest artists of any era.

Formerly a senior academic manager at the Bodleian Library, Justin Reay is a published historian, and among his impending works are an edition of Samuel Pepys’s naval papers in the Bodleian’s collections, and a study of the Admiralty buildings in London. He is frequently engaged as an enrichment speaker on art history for a European cruise line. Justin is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society, a Governor of the RNLI, a Founder Member of the Grinling Gibbons Society, and a member of The Arts Society Cheltenham.

Image:

Source: https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/rembrandt-van-rijn-abraham-entertaining-the-angels.html#slide_29

Title:   Self-portrait 1659

Artist: Rembrandt van Rijn

Part of the Andrew W. Mellon Collection; Accession Number 1937.1.72

Image Use: This image is in the public domain.

Lecture is part of a series hosted by The Arts Society Dumfries to find our more visit their website: https://tasdag.org.uk/