Rembrandt: The Late Works – National Gallery, London

Unlike the Late Turner exhibition which I reviewed recently, the National Gallery didn’t create this exhibition on late works by Rembrandt from a position of reeducation or reinterpretation.  The works on display are firmly within the Dutch Golden Age and have always been respected as masterful works (and quite a high number of them as masterpieces).  Personal problems aside, nobody was accusing Rembrandt of having lost the plot like they did with poor old Turner, although both continued to innovate and surprise into their dotage.  This is therefore more a celebration of a familiar kind of excellence.

In fact, the exhibition’s curators seem to have focused on getting together the best group of loans imaginable, to create an overwhelming visual assault.  From the first room of insightful late self-portraits to the loan of ‘The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis’ from the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Sweden (a loan so exciting it was shouted from the proverbial rooftops on the National’s website and in the exhibition text), the works assembled could take you years to go and see in their various institutions, and, despite the chronological limitation of the exhibition to late works, it does not feel like there are any noticeable gaps.

For me, the only thing which let this exhibition down was its popularity.  The fact that I often squeeze in a visit to the National Gallery’s exhibitions a couple of weekends before they close may have something to do with it, but I do find that I spend a disproportionate amount of time navigating around my fellow museum-goers, and also that I end up skimming over some of the more detailed works in front of which queues have formed.  This was very much the case for Rembrandt: The Late Works.  The curators had been thoughtful in their selection of engravings and sketches, and those which I had the opportunity to get close to were illuminating, but I found myself wishing I had the luxury of being there on a quiet weekday morning, if such a thing exists in Trafalgar Square.

I don’t want to detract too much from the obvious strengths of the exhibition, however.  The works chosen, as I mentioned, were superb.  The paintings in each thematic section were complemented by sketches and engravings which delved deeper into Rembrandt’s process and experimentations.  The poignancy of finishing with his last work, ‘Simeon with the Christ Child in the Temple’ wasn’t overkill.  Frankly I thought I had seen my fill of Dutch Old Masters when I lived in Amsterdam, but I really enjoyed this exhibition and expanded my knowledge of the artist’s work, life and techniques.  And to enjoy it despite the overcrowding is, I’m sure, a testament to a lot of hard work put in by the curatorial and exhibition design teams, as well as to the skill of Rembrandt himself.