And then of across college looks good and courageous. Northern Europeans watch the US Marine Reserve here at Oxford,
which is where we are now in the fantastic young Rembrandt exhibition, which you are co curator.
I should say we're here in the central, all of the exhibition and we're wearing facemasks.
So we'd have to speak louder so you can see what we're saying. Welcome to some course full of shorts.
Thank you for the amazing exhibition. How did the idea for it come?
How did it emerge? How did it develop? Well, the exhibition is a long time in the making.
In fact, the initial idea of the exhibition started over 10 years ago.
So before I joined the Ashmolean Museum and it started between conversations between the then director of the National Museum,
Professor Christopher Brown, and the curator of museum the Lock and Hall in Leiden, Leiden, which is Rembrandt's birthplace,
hands the idea to focus on Rembrandt's lie, then periods on its very beginnings of this career.
Twenty nineteen was the international year of Rembrandt, which was celebrated worldwide with many exhibitions,
publications, conferences, workshops and 2019 mark 350 years since Rembrandt's death.
So that was although over, focussing on a very different part of his career, of focussing on the very early part rather than his death.
We thought that would be a good occasion to stage the Rembrandt exhibition in Oxford and in Leiden, who are also Twin Cities and University Cities.
So it was a very appropriate partnership. Can you walk us through the exhibition?
What were the driving themes? And there's many guiding themes.
And what we didn't want to do in the in the exhibition is do a chronological survey
because that would be really boring if we just would have arranged all the paintings,
all the prints, all the drawings in chronological order and showed them.
So we were really trying to provide a glimpse into Rembrandt's workshop, sort of looking over his shoulder how his working Maharis methods.
What are his interests? Well, Horace techniques were his themes.
And so we sort of tried to theme the exhibition in different sections.
And so at the very beginning and we've just walk through the entrance door and we walk through the first gallery,
you start off with an introduction more, which shows three self portraits by Rembrandt.
And we deliberately did this because the first thing we wanted our officers to see was to meet the young Rembrandt.
And so we showed three self portraits when he's 22 years old, both in drawing, painting and in print.
And we've done that very deliberately because we really ones that we didn't want
to feature Rembrandt as a painter or as a print maker or as a draughtsman.
We wanted to show him as a holistic artist who's working in all these media at the same time on the same projects.
So we wanted to show a cross-section.
And so from done from their own words, from that introduction, more will first meet Rembrandt's family in Leiden.
And so Rembrandt portrayed many, many depictions of his father, of his mother.
Other people we can't identify saw like the finger, his brothers or sisters, his uncles, his arms.
And once we've introduced the family in Leiden and in fact, we've designed that section for the very nice Dutch marble floors.
So if you come to the exhibition, look at the floor and you'll see this nice marble pattern.
Once we've done that, we're going to explore Rembrandt Springs, making techniques, etching technique.
And we're going to do that through his very earliest prints,
but also some of the mistakes he made, the botched friends, the unfinished prints he made.
We even have original copper plates in the exhibition which are lying alongside the prints taken from them.
We have a video which shows how the etching technique was done.
If we then look around the first gallery, we also have Rembrandts very first paintings.
And if we look at these paintings, we can already tell that Rembrandt was not this born genius.
Like he really wasn't as accomplished yet at the beginning of his career as we'd like to think.
Rembrandt as the great artist, as naturally gifted master.
No, he really had to practise. He had to experiment. He had to fail here to improve through sheer determination and experimentation.
Will he then gradually and quite rapidly transform into the master real?
No. So in the first gallery, we really sort of see the very new paintings, which aren't quite daring.
And so you'll see there's still a lack of perspective, very garish colour payload.
No, not to me. Francis, if you look at the fingers, they just look like soft.
Because if you look at the ears, they look like telephone receivers, it's all very caricature old.
And so then when we enter the second room, so the central hall in which we are now sitting,
we're going to explore a Rembrandt in line and his collaboration's.
And so the very first part of the second room explores the partnerships between Rembrandt and Levens.
And so when we look at the French. Because it was once a friendship like they're only there's only a few months difference in age between them.
They went to the same school. They lived in the same neighbourhood. They had the same painter teacher.
So they definitely knew each other, were very good friends, grew up together. Levens was more naturally gifted.
He was Milke Mauck, premature than Rembrandt. And I think it's that difference in Italians,
that sort of difference in levels that really spurred Rembrandt on to become bathrooms or sort of creative competition between them.
And you can really tell from looking at the exhibition as we explore a few themes that they both painted or true or made prints off at the same time.
So, for instance, we have a section on the raising of Lazarus.
We have a section on Samson and Delilah, sorry, gradualists see them, although they start off quite similarly, especially in their painting technique.
We see gradually we see them sort of becoming very different.
And Rembrandt becoming the Rembrandt we all know and admire today.
And then in the middle of the exhibition, we have probably the most pivotal work of the show, which is the repentant Judas.
Rembrandt painted this and 16 29 Enlow, them 16 29 is, of course,
bang in the middle of our exhibition with charts of the years between 16, 24 and 60, 34.
So 16, 29 is the moment when Rembrandt was painting the repentant Judas.
And when he received a visit in a studio of Constantine Holmes,
who was the art dealer and the secretary to the prince of Orange of the Dutch Republic at that time.
And so when Constantine half and saw this painting and this young artist in live and then he calls them still beardless.
So they must have still been quite young when he sees this painting is completely blown away.
You know, he he's very familiar with the work of the great masters in Amsterdam.
But seeing this young life, them artist paints to repent and chooses is a real transformation.
And so he goes back to The Hague and tells the court how amazing this Rembrandt from life them is.
And from that moment onwards, we see Rembrandt receiving court commissions.
And so that's the second section of this gallery where we see portraits being made from people, Lifford, from courtiers in The Hague.
Also the first paintings entering the principal or interest collection. There's also prints related to a Passion of Christ.
And then in one final section of the second room, we have what we call my naughty corner.
And that's where we explore Rembrandts everyday scenes and salters parlour games.
There's presence. For instance, there's Cezannes urinating.
There's presence defaecating.
There's nudes who don't look very sort of natural, very realistic, who don't really convey to the to the traditional sense of beauty.
So you can see they have sagging breasts. They have soft ballis.
They have some clothes on their thighs. And Rembrandt in the month, like he really wants to depict those women as they appeared in front of him.
And these prints and drawings and paintings were very, very popular in Rembrandt's time.
And I think we can all see why, because, of course,
it's very attractive to see a real woman rather than a sort of idealised imagination of the artist.
And so then in the final room of the exhibition, exploring food, two themes.
One is Rembrandt's workshop, because even already from 16 28.
So when Rembrandt was only 22 years old, he's already attracting students and pupils in his workshop and which is quite early.
And of course, it was very helpful for Rembrandt have assistance helping him, preparing his canvases.
But it was also commercially very viable because they would pay tuition fees to him.
So it was a sort of income for the young Rembrandt. And so we explore several of his pupils and how they work in the style of the Masters.
And often these paintings were done be sold from Rembrandt's workshop as a real Rembrandt,
which now causes art historians across the world huge headaches, because even if there is an original signature by Rembrandt on the painting.
We still can't be sure if it's actually by Rembrandt or by one of his pupils.
And then in the last section, which covers the 16 foot who want 64 to.
We explore how Rembrandt finally moved storms to them, which is the big city with the big Porti International Harbour.
And in fact, he moves in the harbour area.
And so it's a very multicultural area where a Rembrandt moves, too, with ships coming in from the East India Company.
And so we see how Rembrandt starts to collect all these luxury imports could soon see all these fine fabrics from India,
China, no see Japanese swords. You see these sorts of peer, you see harpoons, shoals.
And so it's very interesting to see how Rembrandt then uses all these attributes as studio props and dresses and so forth.
And when the Rembrandt arrived in Amsterdam, he wasn't a citizens.
Yeah, he was in citizen the arts of the city. So he wasn't allowed to sell his own paintings.
So what he had to do is had to work for an art dealer there for three years until he obtained his citizenship.
And once he did, he had that he could join the painter skilled and start selling his own paintings.
And he finally achieved that at sixteen thirty four. And that's the end of our exhibition,
because then the early career of this young artist has concluded and is ready for the mature phase of his career.
It gives us a very detailed look as a period in his life with so much happened.
Can it put the young Rembrandt in the context of the scholarship of this time?
So the young Rembrandt as a sort of understudied area of Rembrandt scholarship,
because if we go to the rights museum or if you go to any exhibition by Rembrandt,
whether it's about his Prudence's, Roys or his paintings, they always focus on the mature or the period of Rembrandt's life,
because that's when we really see that typical Rembrandt style, sort of a fairly dramatic biblical scenes, the historical scenes,
the impressive portraits where you see the broad brush strokes, the thick impasto lying on the canvas with the young Rembrandt.
He really wants to go to the periods before he became famous, before he became successful.
And because these paintings aren't as accomplished here, especially in the very first year,
and the same goes for the prints, his drawings are always amazing, like Rembrandt is the most incredible draughtsman.
But you really see him struggling in the paintings and in the prints.
And so for me, as an art historian, that's a lot more interesting to sort of see where the artist came from that he did.
And he wasn't just born as this amazing genius and made the most incredible paintings from the beginning of his career.
No, you really see him practising. You see him experimenting.
You see him failing, trying again and then eventually becoming much better off through his own persistence.
Now, he never finished formal education. Was that unusual for the time?
Yeah. Who wanted to become an artist? Who didn't necessarily there wasn't an academy, for instance, in the Dutch Republic.
So what you would do is you would enrol with a fellow artist or an established artist, do apprenticeships.
And we know, for instance, that Rembrandt and at Loans in University, which was the first University of the Dutch Republic founded in 50 and 75.
So not that long before Rembrandt enrolled.
He was 14 at the time, which sounds really young, but there is no proof that a Rembrandt actually attended an elector's or finished a degree.
And so it's more likely that he registered at the university to get a tax break and perhaps for the fear previa that allowed it.
So what Rembrandt did, as soon as he knew that he wants to become an artist,
he he did an apprenticeship with a local artist in Leiden, so-called Yakob translation and proof no one might know his name nowadays.
But he was one of Rembrandt's teachers and Rembrandt stayed there for three years.
We can't really see great influence of funds.
Marman Very Rembrandts later work.
And so we presume that Rembrandt mainly learns at technical aspects, for instance, grinding of pigments for carrying of compasses,
maybe some sketching, maybe painting the backgrounds of the painting of the master and all the small efforts.
All was after three years from Rome to Amsterdam for a very short period of six months to go and study.
One of the great painters at that time in Amsterdam called Peter Lassman, and again, not very well known anymore today, but back then the.
First, and both leaves and reference went to study with him.
And so we have a painting and a drawing in the exhibition to show how last Monday influenced Rembrandt Brooklyn's.
So I give a sense of the exhibition, these Rembrandt as a solitary genius.
That's my perception of it. Was that really the case? Yeah, I think if you look at the exhibition, you see how many collaborations,
how many partnerships, how many creative collaborations that Rembrandt engaged in.
And yes, there is that perception of Rembrandt being a somewhat grumpy, arrogant, solitary artist.
But I think especially in this early phase of his career, his first 10 years, because he wasn't that great yet.
And he admitted that he knew this himself. He had to work with other people.
So we've already touched upon his creative, competitive friendship with Levens.
Of course, we have all the pupils who are running around in his workshop.
And we know up to six pupils, six named pupils that were working in Rembrandt's workshop.
And they are in a period and there must have been many more that whose name have now been forgotten or that we don't have evidence anymore from.
We also know that Rembrandt collaborated with another printmaker. And so, of course, we see tens and tens of beautiful small etchings.
And this exhibition by Rembrandt were very drawing, like they're very sketchy, very rich and all.
They really show Rembrandt's unique style. There's also few prints in the exhibition which are reproductions after his paintings.
And these were usually made in collaboration with another printmaker from Lowe that we called him.
Essentially, some truly young talent leads young Kulis from Leeds.
And so we know that when the Rembrandt wanted to make a proper prints or proper reproductive prints after his,
so he went to young needs for him to make the prints for.
But one more question which which intrigues me, which is that we're here.
Part of the University of Oxford. In a must show, yourself and the others are involved in tutoring.
Do you think Rembrandt was a good tutor? I think so.
Although, again, he is sort of known as a sort of grumpy, quite move the artist.
He did attract many pupils. And in fact, it's appropriate to ask this question because there is a one painting in
particular in the exhibition which really illustrates what a great pupil tutor.
What a great teacher Rembrandt was. And so one of Rembrandt's most famous pupils, perhaps not at the time,
but who would eventually become a very famous painter in his own right is shut it down.
And if you go to a national gallery, you can see lots of his paintings, for instance.
And so we have a selection of very early paintings by shirttail. In this exhibition, including a portraits by though after a Rembrandt self-portrait,
which makes Rembrandt look looks much prettier than he does in his own self portraits.
But there's one painting in particular from the Getty in Los Angeles, which shows the young Prince Rupert with his tutor.
And in fact, the painting itself is a collaboration between Rembrandt and Dalle.
And Rembrandt painted the tutor and now painted the pupil, Prince Rupert.
And it's such a touching collaboration and you immediately see the difference in style Rembrandt.
You know, he depicts this old tutor with this friend called handsome, typical old lived face, while the older student has very smooth,
fine skin, which is very typical, fertile, and which would become his trademarks and his trademark.
He has to come.
And I have thank you so much for this this interview and for holding it in this sort of magnificent setting where in 2020 the exhibition has opened,
it's closed, its reopening continues to be opened until last November 1st of November.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you, family.