Brushstrokes and Broken Dreams: Rembrandt’s Late Works

“Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses.”

— Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (unsure of translation origin but it’s all over the internet)

It was on the advice of one of my former teachers that I decided to visit the new exhibition at the National Gallery soon after moving to London, a display of art by an old Dutch master that would apparently be “life-changing”. I passed beneath the glorious pillars overlooking Trafalgar Square as someone completely new to the Dutch Golden Age, and emerged almost four hours later positively reeling from the sheer power of what I had just seen.

This exhibition, displayed in the Sainsbury Wing from 15th October 2014 to 15th May 2015, presents quite possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see over eighty masterpieces from one of the greatest artists of all time, all together in one place, summoned from all across the globe.

This artist is Rembrandt van Rijn.

A man who suffered crippling tragedy in his life, his earthy, starkly honest paintings depict, above all else, raw emotion at its most visceral. From the penetrating and troubled gaze of the artist himself in his self-portrait of 1659, to the tear-filled eyes of Lucretia (1666) moments after her suicide, forced to take her own life by the “shame” of being raped, each and every one of the paintings and etchings hanging dramatically in the shadowy passages of the display tell their own arresting story. The terrible solemnity of the almost ghostly Batavians (1661) starkly portrays the truth of revolution and war: there is no glory in it, merely grim resolve and the promise of death. The captivated face of the Old Woman Reading (1655), the book acting as a bridge for us into her world, wonderfully conveys the intimacy and enlightenment of reading, the light illuminating her face from the very pages themselves. The magnificent portrait of Frederik Rihel (1663) takes one’s breath away as it positively towers over the onlookers, the rearing horse leaping from the canvas. But it is the eyes that are always the most expressive feature of Rembrandt’s subjects; the fearless, calculating stares of Juno (1662) and Margaretha de Geer (1661) that root you to the spot, the innocent wonder of the Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654), the varying expressions of hostility and surprise on the faces of the Syndics (1662) as we interrupt their meeting, the despair and indecision in Lucretia’s (1664) eyes as she raises the dagger over her chest while throwing up the other hand almost in protest against her own actions.

Rembrandt’s self-portraiture remains one of his most remarkable achievements, especially owing to the levels of artistic experimentation he embarked upon, from the thick layering of the oils to the defining scrapes of the palette knife.

I also attended the accompanying poetry workshop, “The Unblinking I”, at the National Gallery in late November held by the wonderful Colette Bryce, which was all about finding inspiration in this brutally honest self-portraiture, the connections between art and literature, the varying tools used to express them, and the power of the poet and the artist.

One of our endeavours over the course of the day was to write a description of the 1659 self-portrait to someone who couldn’t see it, exploring the atmosphere, the spirit, the sensory evocations, and perhaps even the dialogue it may have spoken.

I entitled my crude attempt, ‘Brushstrokes and Broken Dreams’:

Wiry curls frame his sallow face,
Caressed by the shadows in this yawning space,
And yet, golden light filters from above,
Quietly dripping from some fierce and distant place.

Brow rough as a yellowed page,
Drawn with wisdom, sadness, years of buried rage,
And yet, you are frozen in time by that piercing gaze,
Like shackles holding you in some gloomy cage.

He sits silently before you, a melancholy sight,
The craggy hands shifting restlessly, clasped tight,
And yet, his breath rustles that sage hair on his lip,
As though he is on the brink of some sacred rite –

Of shattering the uniform rhythm of the silence,
Slicing the shadows,
Perhaps rising –

But the moment passes, a wintry breeze
Carried off with the rotting leaves,
And you remain transfixed by that piercing gaze.

Your lips part, what’s this?
His heavy silence splintering yours at the seams,
The question searing your sandpaper throat,
Shrivelling under the cries of his tortured
And wearied eyes.

But you finally whisper, “what are you thinking of?”
And with one ancient, rattling sigh he replies,
“Of brushstrokes and broken dreams.”