For the first time in its history, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna is dedicating a major special exhibition to Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669). Never before has it been possible to admire such an abundance of major works by the master, one of the most important Dutch Baroque painters, in Austria. The exhibition takes a special approach in contrasting Rembrandt’s paintings with works by his brilliant pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678).
Rembrandt’s workshop was the centre of a lively exchange on artistic challenges: Both Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten saw themselves as exploratory artists who were always seeking out new ways to depict nature and optical phenomena with deceptive truth to life. Rembrandt’s illusionistic skills also fascinated Van Hoogstraten and would yield a lastinginfluence on his works.
The exhibited works from different genres bear witness to the competition between the two artists, but also show innovative pictorial inventions which helped Van Hoogstraten celebrate great successes at the court in Vienna.
Moreover, Van Hoogstraten’s Introduction to the Academy of Painting (Inleyding), published in 1678, provides a unique source of information on Rembrandt’s workshop practices, teaching methods and art theoretical opinion.
Light itself became the central protagonist in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. It plays a decisive role in the illusionist depiction of the visible and the invisible world, addressing all senses of the viewers.
Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten are exceptional artists in the field of illusionism. The approx. sixty works chosen for this exhibition do particular justice to their innovative experiments with colour and lighting as well as their gift of creating deceptively convincing realities. Paintings from all creative periods of the two painters enter a dialogue. Visitors of the exhibition will gain exciting insights into the artists’ commonalities, individual developments in their works, and their artistic interplay.
This will be the first time that the multi-faceted work of the ambitious Samuel van Hoogstraten, who also found success at Emperor Ferdinand III’s (1637-1657) court in Vienna, will be highlighted in this context.
The selection of works on show offers an unprecedented opportunity to see the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten collection together. They include Rembrandt’s Large Self-Portrait and Small Self-Portrait, The Prophetess Anna, Portrait of a Man, Portrait of a Woman and Titus van Rijn, the Artist’s Son, Reading as well as Van Hoogstraten’s Old Man at the Window and Inner Courtyard of the Vienna Hofburg in a Feigned Picture Frame.
They are joined by loans from renowned Austrian and international institutions. The highlights include, among others, Rembrandt’s Girl in a Picture Frame from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, his A Woman in Bed from the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh and his St John the Baptist Preaching from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as well as Van Hoogstraten’s Feigned Letter-Rack Painting from the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, his Self-Portrait from Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna and his Perspective View with a Young Man Reading in a Renaissance Palace from the Dordrechts Museum. Further important loans come, among others, from the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Royal Collection London, the Museé du Louvre Paris, the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, the Museo National Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid, the Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, the Armand Hammer Collection in Los Angeles, the Leiden Collection in New York and from private loans.
Main Image: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606 Leiden – 1669 Amsterdam) Girl in a Picture Frame 1641 panel, 105.5 × 76.3 cm
The Royal Castle in Warsaw © The Royal Castle in Warsaw – Museum
Photo: Andrzej Ring, Lech Sandzewicz
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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