A Quick Look At The Genius Behind Rembrandt Paintings
Posted By nikonstunninggallery on December 31, 2011
To this day, most current generation artists still study the methods and styles that were developed by a notable Dutch painter who lived centuries ago, from 1606 to 1669. Rembrandt van Rijn not only created works of art, but also innovated methods that many of today’s art schools still teach to their students, all while he lived out his entire life in Holland. Rembrandt paintings now fetch millions, but what exactly set him apart from the other painters of his generation? One might argue that there was nothing completely distinct about the subjects that he utilised, and surely there were other painters who were also using similar approaches.
Rembrandt was a rather keen observer of details basically as it is with most successful painters, capturing the details in the paintings he created employing subjects that consisted mostly of himself, his wife, along with a few other female companions. Some of his other favorite subjects were both historical and Biblical figures, and he was amazing at capturing and rendering the complexities of his subject’s facial expressions whether they were obvious expressions of joy and sorrow or even the more subtle and complex expressions of consternation and contemplation. He was uncanny in his ability to bring out the character of his subjects by weaving drama into several of his pieces, resulting in great Rembrandt oil paintings.<
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He accomplished this drama by alternating layering techniques to build up colour, as well as bring out the subject from its background with the use of strong contrasts.
“Impasto” was a technique employed by Rembrandt in quite a few of his finest known portraits that laid on thick layers of paint. He would also use a thin glaze at other times to obtain a layer of color that hardly seemed there. Although he did use brighter colours, notably for the subjects themselves, the majority of the palette would consist of somber colours like brown, black, gray and white. Another technique that is strongly associated with Rembrandt is called “chiaroscuro” which utilised strong contrasts to produce a sense of drama in his paintings and draw the eye to the subject. He was not the first one to have utilized this technique though as he had studied it thru his teacher who introduced him to the works of another painter, Caravaggio (1573-1610). Still, Rembrandt used it quite well in almost all of his famous oil paintings, setting the subject against a dark background and bathing it in light. Even his etchings from his earlier years as a student showed Caravaggio’s influence as he would probably contrast lights and darks even in these simpler works.