Taubman Museum of Art to Open Exhibition of Rembrandt Etchings

Written by Gary Schwartz Tuesday, 03 November 2009 20:47

ROANOKE, VA.- Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt’s Etchings will be on view at the Taubman Museum of Art beginning November 20, 2009 through February 7, 2010. The exhibition features 35 rare etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn created between 1629 and 1648. As one of the towering figures in the history of art, Rembrandt, a miller’s son from the university town of Leiden, was an artist of unmatched genius. Equally gifted as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman, Rembrandt proved himself to be as skillful at making portraits as he was at creating religious and mythological narratives. His landscapes are just as remarkable as his rare still lifes and subjects detailing everyday life.

Widely recognized as the greatest practitioner of the etching technique in the history of art, Rembrandt created 300 prints that constitute a body of work unparalleled in richness and beauty. Rembrandt repeatedly chose beggars as the subject for his etchings. Many of Rembrandt's etchings sympathetically portray beggars as biblical figures. These etchings of beggars also played an essential role in Rembrandt's formative years as an artist.

In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, Dutch author and art historian Gary Schwartz writes “The image of the beggar in Netherlandish art was no better than in society as a whole. It would not then have been out of line with the convictions of his society, with Netherlandish artistic tradition or classical art theory, had Rembrandt depicted beggars as contemptible or loathsome creatures. Indeed, some of his work fits perfectly well into this picture." Schwartz is also the editor of The Complete Etchings of Rembrandt published by Dover Publications in 1994.

However, many of Rembrandt's etchings are of biblical scenes with biblical figures portrayed as beggars. Schwartz writes, “This kind of crossover between street life and sacred history matches a pattern that is found elsewhere in Rembrandt's work. Mean and sordid though they may have been in life and in art theory, in Rembrandt's etchings beggars are bestowed with sanctity and individuality.”

He continues. “This constellation of images and of markets - from the pennies paid for small etchings of beggars to the veritable fortunes Rembrandt earned for paintings for the stadholder - shows how essential Rembrandt's etchings of beggars were in his formative years as an artist. The way he imagined the beggar is inextricable from the way he imagined himself, the way he imagined Christ, the way he conceived of imagery itself.”

Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt’s Etchings is drawn from the John Villarino Collection and organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

At the heart of downtown Roanoke, the new 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art proves an arresting landmark for visitors arriving from US I-581. As Roanoke's most contemporary structure, it provides an analog for the city's evolution from industrial and manufacturing town to technology-driven city. The building's forms and materials evoke both the drama of the surrounding mountainous landscape of the Shenandoah Valley and the lyrically gritty industrial-era building culture of the great early 20th century railroad boom, when Roanoke came to prominence as a switchpoint city of the new South. Visit : http://www.taubmanmuseum.org/

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