A painting long thought to be a “workshop copy” of a cherished Rembrandt in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago has been attributed to Rembrandt himself by a scholar with significant credit to his claim.
As reported by the Guardian, Gary Schwartz, who has written books on Rembrandt and Dutch painting and will deliver a talk on Monday at the National Gallery in London, said a canvas in a private collection in the UK is in fact a Rembrandt in the same way as Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631) at the Art Institute. Both of the works (the former on panel, as opposed to the canvas owned by collector Francis Newman) share the same title and were brought together for a display that opened late last year at the museum in Chicago. The canvas has been considered a replica copy “likely by one of the students in [Rembrandt’s] workshop for the competitive Amsterdam art market,” according to the Art Institute.
But Schwartz told the Guardian: “If Rembrandt had a customer for a replica of his attractive Old Man, what would be the most effective and efficient way of making it? Assigning it to a pupil, whose work would have to be corrected—and the Newman painting shows no sign of corrections—or re-enacting the steps he had just taken, when they were still fresh in mind and hand? Surely the latter makes more sense. This assumption accounts for the outstanding quality of the canvas.”
The canvas was credited to Rembrandt in 1898, when Newman’s great-grandfather bought it. When the panel painting was discovered in 1912, however, the canvas was deemed “a clever reproduction” by the eminent German art historian Wilhelm Bode.
But Bode offered “no serious reasoning for his contention,” according to Schwartz, who just published Dutch Painting as part of Thames & Hudson’s series of books titled “World of Art.”
Newman, who owns the contested work, said, “My view is it’s always been a mystery. I’ve enjoyed the mystery because it meant I could enjoy it on the wall … and not have the responsibility of its potential importance.”
The Art Institute of Chicago maintains that the canvas is a copy, citing infrared scans, X-rays, and pigment analysis, according to the Guardian. But the museum acknowledged that “the conversation about the purpose and authorship of these copies continues to evolve.”
