Rembrandt and the Colin Davidson exhibitions
Currently there is quite possibly Rembrandt's last ever painting on display in the Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast - it is on loan from the National Portrait Gallery and a worker in the museum asked me to write a nice comment in the book to show our appreciation so we would get other paintings on loan and I said I would blog about it. The Colin Davidson exhibition of portraits of people who had lost relatives during the Troubles was on also at the same time very recently – it is now in Paris (1)
The National Portrait Gallery runs a photo portrait competition every year called the Taylor Wessing Prize (2)and I have entered it several times but not with a traditional portrait but this year I have one to enter see below.
THE FELLA WITH A DRAGON TATTOO
The Rembrandt is a self-portrait of Rembrandt aged 63 (3)and he died that year. So there were two portrait exhibitions on at the same time – bliss !
I have seen another self-portrait of Rembrandt also in the Metropolitan Art Museum, New York (4)which is full of paintings donated by rich Americans – the different rooms are named after them. I would like to go back on my own sometime to spend a day there.
So a few days ago along with my mother I had the opportunity to do a Rembrandt workshop at the Ulster Museum – first of all we had a little talk from an artist John Scovell in front of the painting but demand by groups to view it is so intense he is only allowed 10 minutes. Then we had to head off to another room to do some artwork – first of all he showed us all the raw materials of the colours Rembrandt had available - most of them poisonous so we couldn't touch them. Next we had stencils to help us do our own version of the painting – adding layers of colours and texture. The artist said Rembrandt's work was very textured and this style of painting went out of fashion so he died penniless.
The interesting thing about Rembrandt's portrait to a photographer is the way he lit his pictures - the chiaro scuro effect (5). His early portraits when he was young are very bright eg in the portrait which has very recently been authenticated (6)
References
(3) public domain
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