The Baroque Era – Rembrandt Sketches

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a painter and draftsman during the Baroque era and during the Netherlands’ Golden Age of the arts and science. His style was quite realistic in presentation, and he “regarded his drawings the way a novelist regards the ideas he jots down in his journal–as a purely private record of observations and feelings” (1). He studied at the prestigious University of Leiden even though he was a miller’s son, but soon dropped out to pursue a career in doing art (2). He had chosen to go to Amsterdam to pursue his goal of becoming an artist instead of going to Italy like most mentors recommend for those aspiring to be an artist.
In Amsterdam, he found great success. The Netherlands were different from Italy in that there wasn’t a rich or prominent figure (such as the church) to commission artists. Instead, there was a rising, influential merchant class (2) there to buy and sell paintings, allowing lower class people access to art such as Rembrandt’s.

The defining thing about Rembrandt’s work is the level of detail and how realistic his paintings can be. His attention to details, especially the small things, is what makes his paintings stand out from others. An example would be how he uses chiaroscuro, the use of dark and light values that create a stark contrast. Rembrandt takes the technique and applies in in a very subtle way in his paintings; he creates contrasts in the minute details of his work, such as using shadows underneath the eyes or in the folds of skin or clothing, to make the subject feel as though it was lifted from the paper. To get to this level, and to be able to do the paintings that he does, studying from life was vital, and Rembrandt took personal pleasure in using the people and his surrounds as a means to further his skills. This is where is sketches (etches as they were called in his time) play an important role.

Man Pulling a Rope, 1627-1628

A self-portrait, mid-1630s

A Woman Sitting Upon a Hillock, 1631

These three etchings differ in level of completeness, style, and purpose. Rembrandt often sketched from life, as he found inspiration in watching people move about. This is evident in the first etching where the man is pulling on the rope. The lines are quick and create a simple form, yet, they hold a feeling something beyond a quick doodle. The form holds a feeling of being ground in reality. His foot looks like an actual foot. The way the man is pulling on the rope gives the viewer the understand of just how heavy the load is; the viewer can almost feel the weight the man is pulling. All of this feeling packed into something that probably took Rembrandt no more than ten minutes, if even that, to complete.

The second etching is a self-portrait of Rembrandt in the early 1630s. Rembrandt often used himself as a model in his works, and later in his life created many self portraits of himself (2). The viewer here can also tell that this etching did not take Rembrandt long to make because of the kind of lines that were formed, their shape, and unrefined look. His hand is very simply drawn, and his coat is not very defined.

The last etching seems to be more of a finished piece than a quick sketch. More effort was put into the work, as the lines are cleaner and more refinded, and was done in ink instead of graphite. Looking at an artist’s sketches are almost just as important as looking at there finished works or paintings. Rembrandt could have never achieved his level of success if he did not draw from life as frequently as he did. He had a personal interest in drawing the things around him, as well was using himself as a model. He chose to stay in his home country because he believed he could achieve his full potential studying from his own people instead of those in Italy. This attitude is how greatness is made.

1. “Rembrandt’s Drawings.” Rembrandt Painting. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. <http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_drawings_start.htm>.

2. “Rembrandt.” The National Gallery. The National Gallery. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/rembrandt>.

Avaritia (Greed), 1558

This piece of art work is Avaritia (Greed) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Done in 1558, it is a part of Bruegel’s series on the Seven Deadly Sins. In the center of the pictures sits a personification of Avaritia (“greed” in Latin) and the negative consequences of greed. The quote, “Quis metus aut pudor est unquam properantis avari” that is written at the bottom is translated as “Scraping Avarice sees neither honor nor courtesy, shame nor divine admonition.” (1)

About the artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder was “Netherlandish painter and designer for engravings. His works provide a profound and elemental insight into man and his relationship to the world of nature” (2). He is called the “Elder” to distinguish him from the long line of Bruegels that came after him. One could say that his art style went through three major changes: Antwerp, Mature, and Late.

Works such as Avaritia (Greed) show Bruegel’s penchant of creating a scene that depicted peasant peoples or many actions or events happening in one painting or work. He often created a work with the purpose to tell some sort of story, as he had developed a “style that uniformly holds narrative, or story-telling, meaning” (3). The art style that Avaritia (Greed) was etched in was Bruegel’s “Antwerp Style,” a style he developed after entering under Hieronymus Cock, an Antwerp publisher. Cock at first tried to pass of Bruegel’s work as someone else named Hieronymus Bosch, but with Bruegel’s Seven Deadly Sins series, Bruegel’s name is on the etchings. With the series, “Bruegel was attempting to substitute a new and more relevant eschatology for Bosch’s traditional view of the Christian cosmos” (2).

I feel that this work was a way of reflecting on how Bruegel saw greed in and around his environment. The Reformation had happened during his life time, and at the time, there was a lot of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church. There were a lot of contradictions within the church and corruption. I think this was a way of depicting that.
Bruegel did not often depict religious figures or themes in his work, but he did make satire work about such themes. To me, the woman sitting in the foreground of the work represents not only the wealthy, but the high members of the Church. In the work, she has coins spilling into her lap, and her hand is reach into the chest next to her for more coins. There are peasants all around her, and they are naked or in very rugged clothing. The person next to her filling up the chest with coins has a large hole in the vase and a mask on his face. There are deformed peasants off to the right begging for coins. They could represent those who were crippled or disabled in some way and often were very poor and homeless. Chaos seems to be going on all around her, yet all the woman cares about are the coins.

1. “Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Avaritia (Greed) (26.72.31)”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/26.72.31 (October 2006).

2.  “Pieter the Elder Bruegel Biography.” Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1 Jan. 2002. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.pieter-bruegel-the-elder.org/biography.html>.

3. Pioch, Nicolas. “Bruegel, Pieter the Elder.” WebMuseum, Paris. 16 Aug. 2002. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/>.