There were three amazing
exhibitions we saw in London last
week, one ended, one ending tomorrow, and one ending 25 January:
Rembrandt:
The Late Works, at the National Gallery, closing 18 January;
Late
Turner: Setting Painting Free,
at the Tate Britain, closing on 25 January 2015; and
Constable:
The Making of a Master, at
the Victoria and Albert, which closed 11 January.
It
is no esoteric secret in the observation that Rembrandt (1606-1669) was an unparalleled genius; but this
exhibition, which presents an incredible richness of paintings and etching from
his extremely creative later years, beginning in the late 1650s until his death
at 63, thrilled us and led me more fully to appreciate the amazing perfection
of his creative powers. As the National
Gallery write-up notes,
...far
from becoming complacent as he aged, or falling into artistic decline, he
radically changed course in his later years to create some of his most daring
drawings, prints, and paintings.
The
works exhibited here...explore the qualities that distinguish this period. They reveal a relentless experimental
approach to technique, an extraordinary skill in rendering the effects of
light...and a quest to understand and represent humanity's deepest motivations
and emotional states.
What
struck me so profoundly, getting the opportunity to immerse myself in glorious
richness of all these masterpieces, was the incredible combination of abilities
Rembrandt had: he may be the most accomplished, nuanced, yet powerful
draughtsman of all time
A Scholar in his Study (Faust) ca. 1652. Etching, engraving, and drypoint.
Reclining female Nude (La Négresse couchée), 1658. Etching and drypoint.
(the subtlety and intensity of his etchings are simultaneous
intricate yet totally and assertively clear in their communication; and yet when he did drawings with reed pens,
Recumbent Lion, Facing Right, 1660-5.
Pen and brown ink on brown paper.
Conspiracy of the Batavians under
Claudius Civilis, ca. 1661.
Pen and brown ink with brown wash.
there
is a fluidity and grace that presents a surprisingly different dimension in
which his ability to be gestural comes to the fore); he was the ultimate
painterly creator of light and color in his paintings, producing tones that
emanate from within the interior of his layers of pigment and give inner life
to all within the paintings;
Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, 1654. Oil on canvas.
Simeon with the Infant Christ in the
Temple, 1669. Oil on canvas.
and
he was an unparalleled observer and recorder of the inner being of the souls as
reflected in the individuality of the faces of all the subjects he captured in
his work (it is impossible not feel the individual character and human history
of each of his subjects—never so strong as in his self-portraits, [I adore the
somewhat quizzical look in his face in this self portrait of 1661, below]
Self Portrait as the Apostle Paul, 1661. Oil on canvas.
Self Portrait with two Circles, 1665-9.
Oil on canvas.
[the painting below is likely the final of his self portraits]
Self Portrait, 1669. Oil on canvas.
but
always present in his rendering of every human being). [as
here in a painting of his son, Titus]
Titus at his Desk, 1655. Oil on canvas.
[or below, in a painting of Titus as a monk]
Titus in a Monk’s Habit, 1650. Oil on canvas.
[or this powerful portrait of an old woman]
Old Woman Reading, 1655. Oil on canvas.
[or the incredibly powerful young face in this amazing
portrayal of St. Bartholomew; please excuse the poor quality image, as it was
the best I could locate]
Saint Bartholomew, 1657. Oil on canvas.
[and then this later, very different portrayal of St.
Bartholomew as an older man—appearing to me almost as a 19th century
businessman!]
Saint Bartholomew, 1661. Oil on canvas.
The fact that Rembrandt could be so exactingly structured—as he is in his
etchings—while at the same time being as emotionally rich and even gesturally
expressive is a combination of abilities found only in the rarest of creative
geniuses; and the fact that these abilities combine with his penetrating
insight into the fullness and complexity of the human soul creates art that one
can only stand in awe of...but which is also virtually impossible also not
simply to revel in and enjoy.
The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam
Drapers’ Guild (known as “The
Syndics”), 1662. Oil on canvas.
Please
do not misunderstand me to be saying that the drawings and etchings do not also
have the richness of emotion and gesture (all of them—and most particularly those
dark, shadowy ones, from which the content can only ever so slowly be felt to
emerge—also have the emotional texture and depth of feeling that is so directly
felt in his paintings),
Adoration of the Shepherds at Night, ca. 1657.
Etching, engraving, and drypoint.
The Entombment, ca. 1654. Etching and drypoint.
or that
the paintings do not have the resounding solidness of structure created by his
amazing talent as a draughtsman: they all have a profound mixture of both—and
therein lies a major aspect of their unique power.
Woman
Bathing in a Stream, 1654. Oil on panel.
Here
is an exhibition not to be missed.
Late
Turner: Setting Painting Free:
Genius
also clearly applies to Turner, as
is clear in the fabulous exhibition at the Tate
Britain. For me, however there are
two very different aspects to Turner—almost
two different Turners, if one looks at the two walls of the final room of the exhibition,
where one wall has two amazingly modern, impressionistic, almost abstract
paintings that seem more about surface than about representation, and which are
to me works of enormous beauty and power, while the other has a few romantic,
pseudo-classical monstrosities that I had to avert my eyes from
completely.
Late
Turner: Setting Painting Free,
as the Tate notes, "is the
first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Turner's late work," cover the last 16 years of his life from 1835 to his death
in 1851:
Bringing
together spectacular works from the UK and abroad, this exhibition celebrates
Turner's creative flowering in these later years when he produced some of his
finest pictures but was also controversial and unjustly misunderstood.
...While
celebrating his liberation from conventional aesthetic constraints it also aims
to set his painting practice free from Victorian prejudices and reductive later
stereotypes.
Turner clearly was a visionary, and some of his paintings—and many of his
sketches and water colors—are movingly wonderful to me. On the other hand, much—in fact, the great
majority—of his work actually leaves me cold, or sometimes even repelled. There are two aspects of Turner that I cannot abide: the first is his romanticism—in his
overly emotional, at times saccharine color schemes and the religiosity of his
use of light, he loses me completely (please do not misunderstand me: his
exploration of light can also be sublime and beautiful in the most measured and
appealing way—as can his use of color; it's just when in heads into the
romantic that it loses me); the second is his tendency to head off into what Wölfflin described as the Baroque, both in his swirling
compositions and emotional intensity of color and movement. I'm sure he is a master in these aspects; but
it is a direction that simply does not work for me. On the other hand, when his compositions are
more Classical in Wölfflin's terminology (more stable, more tension rather movement, more
structural clarity as opposed to emotive color), I fall in love. Amidst the visual cacophony of works that
impinged unpleasantly on me are paintings of enormous power and beauty, and
drawings that are as moving and evocative as I could possibly hope for. There is a proto-Impressionist capturing of
light, moment, atmosphere, and feeling, with a sense of the surface of the
canvas having an importance while still being an evocation of actual
reality. There is a use of brushstroke
and palette knife in the application of the paint that goes into areas that
feel very much like they presage modern abstraction.
Here
are some images of paintings in the show I liked. (They were hard to find, and the Tate
Britain’s website was very unhelpful. I almost bought the catalogue in order to
get some of the images, but the quality of the reproductions was just too
bad.) Only two are oils (the first and
the penultimate)—I guess to be expected, as the drawings and water colors
tended to be less “over-done”; many of the paintings I most liked were nowhere
to be found online; and the last two are ones that while evocative of the ones
I liked in the show, were not actually in it.
Rain, Steam, and Speed, 1844.
Two
of my favorites in the show were water colors of Mt. Rigi
in Lucerne:
Blue Rigi, 1841-2.
The Blue Rigi, Sunrise, 1842. Watercolor on paper.
A Harpooned Whale, 1845. Graphite and watercolor on paper.
There
was a similar painting, with a similar composition, and a similar viaduct that
I really liked, although this is not it:
View or Givet,
on the Meuse, South of Dinant, 1839.
And
one of my favorite little things in the exhibition was a very similar water
color of the interior of Turner’s hotel room in Venice. This one is nice, but
the other seemed almost a tad abstract and was completely riveting to me:
Turner’s Bedroom in the Palazzo Giustinian (the
Hotel Europa), 1840. Water color
This
is an amazing exhibition. The fact that
I did not like most of the work in it in no way diminished my tremendous joy at
seeing the work I did enjoy. (Although,
I must confess, that has always been true of my experience of seeing Turner.) And remember: these are
preferences I am voicing: there are many who love the romantic, and his work in
this mode I'm sure is quite wonderful--just not to my taste.
Constable:
The Making of a Master:
As
this show has already closed, I shall be brief at this point. (Hopefully I shall get around soon to posting
a fuller account in the online version.)
Constable is an artist who,
like Turner, I think did some wonderful work.
Unfortunately, for me his "batting average" is far lower than
Turner's--and, when he fails, he does so in a far worse way. When Constable
goes romantic, it is hideous. It was
fascinating to me to see some of the progressions of sketches and studies for
painting in which he started out with what I found to be a satisfying drawing,
begins to elaborate the emotive content, adds color (sometimes successfully,
but usually not), and then produces some of the most saccharine, intensely
displeasing paintings I have ever seen.
Suffice it to say that some looked to me as though they should have been
painted on black velvet backgrounds...if you get my drift. Like Turner, he was experimenting with the
exploration of light, color, and impression in a way that at times was both
satisfying and exciting; but more so than Turner he also spent a lot of time
doing a kind of French Neo-Classical romanticism (there are many links and
comparisons to Claude, who I think was far better at that, but whom I
thoroughly dislike), in a way that I could not help but imagine was very much
pandering to commercial tastes. Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking and
apologetics...
Here
are two pleasing examples:
View from Hampstead, 1833.
The Coast at Brighton - Stormy Evening,
ca.1828
And
here are two of the other kind:
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831. Oil on canvas.
The
Leaping Horse, 1825