Rembrandt Etchings, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Québec City

It was a rare treat that we saw-- the Rembrandt Etchings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen were on view when we were in Québec City this past summer. Rembrandt was profoundly innovative and revolutionized the art of engraving. He adopted a resolutely experimental approach and developed the process to the utmost. Like Dürer, Goya, or Picasso, Rembrandt is regarded as one of the greatest engravers of all time. He produced some of the most celebrated works in the history of the medium and his impact on the discipline is still relevant today.

Rembrandt produced 300 engravings between 1625 and 1665 and 80 of them were on view. Most of the works are etchings, a complex technique in which the image is etched on a copper plate using an acid. For Rembrandt, etching was a full-fledged art form equal to painting that he researched passionately throughout his career. Moreover, almost all of his prints are original works independent of his paintings. The exhibition encompassed all the topics that Rembrandt broached. His self-portraits reconstitute the artist’s biography while his religious prints propose a unique, spectacular interpretation of the Bible. His landscapes reveal an artist of exquisite sensitivity. His portraits and genre scenes display the full diversity of Dutch society at the time. The exhibition also allowed visitors to see Rembrandt in his historic period and environment as a resident of Amsterdam, a thriving, cosmopolitan city and brilliant hub of intellectual and artistic life, and an inhabitant of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, one of the great European powers of the 17th century. It also reveals the vagaries of the artist’s personal life, including the painful loss of loved ones and the serious financial difficulties that darkened his final years.