JUDY WOODRUFF: 2019 marks
the 350th anniversary of
the death of the Dutch
master painter Rembrandt.
To celebrate his life
and legacy, museums
in the Netherlands are
dedicating the entire
year to new exhibits
showcasing his work.
Jeffrey Brown traveled
to Amsterdam, as part
of our ongoing arts and
culture series, Canvas.
JEFFREY BROWN: The Night
Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn.
Every day, thousands of
visitors crowd into Amsterdam's
Rijksmuseum to catch a glimpse
of one of history's most
celebrated art works, a
masterpiece of storytelling,
light and shadow,
on a mammoth scale.
But we got our own after-hours
look at it and the other works
in the museum's extraordinary
new exhibition titled
All the Rembrandts.
It's part of the Netherlands'
celebrations commemorating
the 350th anniversary of his
death, and marks the first
time this world-renowned
museum has made its entire
collection of Rembrandts
open to the public.
JANE TURNER, Rijksmuseum:
This is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to see it all out.
JEFFREY BROWN: Jane Turner
is curator of prints.
JANE TURNER: It's something
you can just come back to over
and over again, and each time
you look, you will see something
new and something different.
JEFFREY BROWN: There are
22 paintings, including
grand portraits of
Dutch high society and
scenes from the Bible,
60 drawings, and
more than 300 prints.
They span his career, and show
an artist unmatched at capturing
the humanity in his subjects,
even in sketches of
daily life, like this
one of a pancake-maker
and some very hungry
children.
JANE TURNER: She looks a bit
cynical, and she's thinking,
you will get your pancake
when I see the money.
And the young kid
-- it's brilliant.
He's digging in his pocket and
he's really, really digging.
And Rembrandt, he's managed --
he makes the leg bent a bit.
JEFFREY BROWN: Right.
JANE TURNER: And so you
really feel that movement
of trying to find his coin.
JEFFREY BROWN: But this
is a street scene, right?
I mean, it's just
something he...
JANE TURNER: This
is a street scene.
This is something that
he would have seen.
But it's the brilliance with
which he observes humanity.
JEFFREY BROWN: The sketches also
offer a glimpse into Rembrandt
himself and his development
as an artist.
JANE TURNER: You see the
artist thinking on paper.
There are mistakes, and he
doesn't try to cover it up.
He's not doing it for
somebody else or to sell.
He does it for himself.
And then you get the raw inside
glimpse of what he thinks,
what makes him laugh, what
makes him grieve,
what makes him sad.
JEFFREY BROWN: One of his
main subjects was himself.
The exhibition opens with
a roomful of self-portraits
done throughout his
life, smiling, frowning,
young, and old.
He used them, in part, to
practice techniques that would
come to embody his larger works.
In other cases, they served
as a statement to the outside
world, one that at times had
its critics.
JONATHAN BIKKER, Author,
"Rembrandt: Biography
of a Rebel": They called
him the first heretic
in art history.
JEFFREY BROWN: Jonathan Bikker
is curator of research here,
and author of the new book
"Rembrandt: Biography
of a Rebel."
JONATHAN BIKKER: A number
of them mentioned that he
broke the rules of our art.
JEFFREY BROWN: Which meant what?
JONATHAN BIKKER: A
variety of things.
Some of the things they accused
him of doing, we wouldn't
think of as radical at all, for
example, painting old
wrinkled women, for example.
What you were supposed to do
was to select the best, the
most beautiful things in nature,
and improve upon that.
Rembrandt didn't do that.
For Rembrandt, this was
the ideal playing field
for light and dark.
JEFFREY BROWN: For Bikker,
the culmination of Rembrandt's
achievement is the painting
known as The Jewish Bride, a
portrait of two lovers cast as
the Old Testament's Isaac and
Rebecca.
JONATHAN BIKKER: This is
the greatest painted ode
to love that was ever made.
JEFFREY BROWN: The greatest?
JONATHAN BIKKER: The greatest.
JEFFREY BROWN: It also
shows Rembrandt's technique,
here, the use of thick
layers of richly colored
paint.
JONATHAN BIKKER: It's
modeled like clay.
The high point of that technique
is figuratively and literally
in the sleeve of Isaac.
That is the thickest passage
of paint in any 17th century
painting produced in Europe.
Every painting that Rembrandt
did was a different experiment.
JEFFREY BROWN: The celebration
also sheds new light on
Rembrandt the man, walking the
streets of Amsterdam,
a celebrity artist in
his own day, in one of
the world's wealthiest
cities.
LIDEWIJ DE KOEKKOEK, Rembrandt
House Museum: He lived on
quite a large scale . He spent
a lot of money.
He was an avid collector of
expensive and beautiful things.
JEFFREY BROWN: Lidewij de
Koekkoek is the director of
the Rembrandt House Museum.
Rembrandt originally bought
the house at the height of his
fame near one of Amsterdam's
iconic canals, and he used it
as a living space, studio and
workshop for his apprentices.
LIDEWIJ DE KOEKKOEK: Here,
his first wife, Saskia.
JEFFREY BROWN: A new exhibition
examines his social network,
family, friends and colleagues.
LIDEWIJ DE KOEKKOEK:
We have this romantic
idea about Rembrandt
being very grumpy, being
a lonely genius.
But he wasn't at all.
I mean, he was obsessed
by art, and art was
foremost in his life.
So he surrounded himself
with people, and that is what
the exhibition shows, people
that shared his interest in art,
that he could discuss art with,
connoisseurs, pupils, artist
friends.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well-connected,
but not always easy.
ALETTE FLEISCHER, Art Historian:
We, of course, think of him
as a genius, but a genius with
- - I don't know, with a
temper, and opinionated, and not
being always a very nice guy.
JEFFREY BROWN: Alette Fleischer,
an art historian, leads tours
on Rembrandt in Amsterdam, and
took us to the Royal Palace,
site of one of the lowest
points of his career.
As the story goes, Rembrandt was
commissioned to paint a portrait
of the first century warrior
Gaius Civilis, but his version,
a moody and gritty depiction,
wasn't what his benefactors
were expecting.
And they pulled the painting
shortly after its completion.
ALETTE FLEISCHER: The client
wanted one thing, and he
gave them another story.
And he was completely sure that
what he did was the right thing.
His man was more
truthfully felt.
JEFFREY BROWN: While
he continued to receive
commissions, his later
life proved turbulent.
Overspending led Rembrandt to
declare bankruptcy, and he spent
the remainder of his life in
relative poverty.
He was buried in a rental grave
here at the Westerkerk, his
remains eventually moved and
lost to history.
JANE TURNER: It was a
life filled with success,
happiness, great tragedy.
JEFFREY BROWN: And it's
all there in the artwork,
notably in the portraits
of his wife, Saskia.
She gave birth to four
children, but only one
survived to adulthood.
And she herself died just
shy of her 30th birthday.
Curator Jane Turner:
JANE TURNER: There are lovely
portraits of her, but there
are also a series of very sad
drawings, when -- before
or after she's lost
one of her children.
And this is gritty,
everyday life, and poignant.
And you can imagine him wanting
to sit with her because she's
sad or she's ill or whatever.
And while he sits with
her, he draws her.
JEFFREY BROWN: And it comes
through that he loves her.
JANE TURNER: He adores her.
He absolutely adores her.
JEFFREY BROWN: For Jonathan
Bikker, it's that ability that
keeps Rembrandt relevant and
beloved three-and-a-half
centuries after his death.
JONATHAN BIKKER: We still have
emotions in the 21st century.
It's what defines us,
basically, as human beings.
So when we look at Rembrandt's
paintings, but also his
etchings and his drawings, we
actually experience
our own humanity.
JEFFREY BROWN: The
exhibition All the Rembrandts
runs through June 10.
For the "PBS NewsHour,"
I'm Jeffrey Brown at the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.