Full Description
This is the exceptionally rich story of Rembrandt’s fame and influence in Britain. No other nation has witnessed such a passionate – and sometimes eccentric – enthusiam for Rembrandt’s works. His imagery has become ubiquitous, making him one of the most recognised artists in history. In this book, some of the world’s leading experts reveal how the taste for Rembrandt’s paintings, drawings and prints evolved, growing into a mania that gripped collectors and art lovers across the country. This reached a fever pitch in the late 1700s, before the dawn of a new century ushered in a re-evaluation of Rembrandt’s reputation and opportunities for the wider public to see his masterpieces for themselves.
The story of Rembrandt’s profound and inspirational impact on the British imagination is illustrated by over 130 sumptuous works by the master himself, as well as by some of Britain’s best-loved artists, including William Hogarth, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Bellany.
Foreword; Introduction; 1 Rembrandt’s Fame in Britain, 1630 1900: An Overview- Christian Tico Seifert; 2 Rembrandt and Britain: The Modern Era – Patrick Elliott; 3 ‘The Finest Possible State’: Cataloguing and Collecting Rembrandt’s Prints, c.1700 1840 – Stephanie S. Dickey; 4 From Studio to Academy: Copying Rembrandt in Eighteenth-century Britain – Jonathan Yarker; 5 Regarding Rembrandt: Reynolds and Rembrandt – Donato Esposito; 6 Rembrandt: Paragon of the Etching Revival – Peter Black; 7 Rembrandt and Britain: A ‘Picture Flight’ in Three Stages, 1850 1930 – M.J. Ripps; Catalogue; Bibliography.
About the Author
Christian Tico Seifert is Senior Curator of Northern European Art at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. He has curated a number of exhibitions and contributed to publications including Adam Elsheimer: 1578–1610 (2006), Dürer’s Fame (2011), Masterpieces from Mount Stuart: The Bute Collection (2012) and Rubens & Company: Flemish Drawings from the Scottish National Gallery (2016).
Peter Black is curator at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. He has published widely on prints and drawings, and in 2012 he organised the exhibition Rembrandt and the Passion at the Hunterian.
Stephanie Dickey holds the Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Among her numerous books and articles on Dutch and Flemish art of the seventeenth century are Rembrandt: Portraits in Print (2004), the edited collection Rembrandt and his Circle: Insights and Discoveries (2017), and contributions to exhibition catalogues including Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995) and Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2008). Current projects include a study of Rembrandt’s etchings and the history of print collecting.
Patrick Elliott is Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art. Recent publications include Another World: Dalí, Magritte, Miró and the Surrealists (2010), Tony Cragg (2011), The Two Roberts: Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde (2014), The Amazing World of M.C. Escher (2015), Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place (2016) and True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s & 1930s (2017).
Donato Esposito is an academic and curator who specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, collecting and taste. From 1999 to 2004 he worked as Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and was a 2012–13 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He is the author of Frederick Walker and the Idyllists (Lund Humphries, 2017).
M.J. Ripps read history at Virginia and Cambridge and later art history in Amsterdam. He submitted his doctoral thesis, ‘Bond Street picture dealers and the international trade in Dutch old masters, 1882-1914,’ at Oxford, supervised by Christopher Brown. Previously, he has held grants from the Frick Collection, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Burlington Magazine (Haskell Prize), and spent a year in the paintings department, J. Paul Getty Museum. In addition to being an independent art historian – and continuing to submit papers to scholarly publications – Ripps works in the old master trade.
Jonathan Yarker completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently a director of Lowell Libson, Ltd. in London.
Christian Tico Seifert is Senior Curator of Northern European Art at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. He has curated a number of exhibitions and contributed to publications including Adam Elsheimer: 1578–1610 (2006), Dürer’s Fame (2011), Masterpieces from Mount Stuart: The Bute Collection (2012) and Rubens & Company: Flemish Drawings from the Scottish National Gallery (2016).
Peter Black is curator at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. He has published widely on prints and drawings, and in 2012 he organised the exhibition Rembrandt and the Passion at the Hunterian.
Stephanie Dickey holds the Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Among her numerous books and articles on Dutch and Flemish art of the seventeenth century are Rembrandt: Portraits in Print (2004), the edited collection Rembrandt and his Circle: Insights and Discoveries (2017), and contributions to exhibition catalogues including Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995) and Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2008). Current projects include a study of Rembrandt’s etchings and the history of print collecting.
Patrick Elliott is Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art. Recent publications include Another World: Dalí, Magritte, Miró and the Surrealists (2010), Tony Cragg (2011), The Two Roberts: Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde (2014), The Amazing World of M.C. Escher (2015), Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place (2016) and True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s & 1930s (2017).
Donato Esposito is an academic and curator who specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, collecting and taste. From 1999 to 2004 he worked as Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and was a 2012–13 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He is the author of Frederick Walker and the Idyllists (Lund Humphries, 2017).
M.J. Ripps read history at Virginia and Cambridge and later art history in Amsterdam. He submitted his doctoral thesis, ‘Bond Street picture dealers and the international trade in Dutch old masters, 1882-1914,’ at Oxford, supervised by Christopher Brown. Previously, he has held grants from the Frick Collection, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Burlington Magazine (Haskell Prize), and spent a year in the paintings department, J. Paul Getty Museum. In addition to being an independent art historian – and continuing to submit papers to scholarly publications – Ripps works in the old master trade.
Jonathan Yarker completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently a director of Lowell Libson, Ltd. in London.
