Rembrandt's memorable faces

Rembrandt himself

Rembrandt's wife, Saskia

According to the explanatory notes at the current Rembrandt exhibition that I saw today at the National Gallery of Canada, the art market in the 17th century Netherlands was "funded by colonialism and global trade." The Dutch landed in New Amsterdam (New York, as it became) and the Haudenosaunee people signed a treaty with them, hoping for peace and cooperation. They made symbolic wampum belts, the two parallel rows of beads symbolizing a Dutch ship and a native canoe moving side by side down the "River of Life". One such beaded belt is on display in the first gallery of the exhibition, alongside Rembrandt's early sketches. To me, the deliberate juxtaposition of an Indigenous art form and the Old Masters of Europe smacks of political correctness and condescension, but I tried to keep an open mind. The intention is to make us see Rembrandt's creations from a "new perspective". There were also allusions to the slave trade of those days.

Context is everything, as another artist says, in another context.

Some of Rembrandt's portrait subjects in 17th century Amsterdam certainly flaunted their wealth and status, achieved at the cost of various kinds of exploitation. Only the wealthiest could afford to have their full length portraits done. I do see the point about their beaver fur hats. Beavers were pretty much wiped out in Europe by that time, so north American beaver pelts were valuable to those who wanted fur-trimmed hats; Dutch traders negotiated with the Mohawks to acquire them.

Go to the exhibition, though, and the images that will linger in your mind are not the beads and furs, but the faces Rembrandt sketched, etched or painted: his self-portraits, of course, but also the faces of men and women whose expressive eyes still seem alive, or of groups of people in the streets, such as a destitute family being helped by a kind, elderly man in his doorway, and the faces in imaginary sketches of biblical scenes. Even the expression on the face of the angel who stops Abraham from murdering his son Isaac, about to slit his throat like a sacrificial lamb, is showing human emotion. (Rembrandt did an oil painting of this subject as well as the sketch, with the figures in a different configuration.)

Portraits of Saskia, Rembrandt's wife, of Hendrickje his mistress and of his daughter-in-law, Titus' wife, all executed with great intensity, are included in the show, as well as a few less beautiful female faces (he painted the truth as he saw it, was not inclined to flattery) and there's a self-confident lady in a red dress and pearls with deep, dark eyes, reminiscent of the Jewish Bride. The red paint, known as Dutch scarlet, came from the addition of crushed cochineal insects from the desserts of Mexico.

Rembrandt's son's wife

Hendrickje, looking sad, but impressively framed