Which Rembrandt should we believe?

What surprises you about young Rembrandt (in the exhibition of the same name at the Ashmolean, Oxford) is how capable Rembrandt was of a whole range of styles - perhaps to be expected from an artist at the start of his or her career. In addition, Rembrandt employed assistants, who seemed to have spent much of their time creating copies of Rembrandt's own work, including, rather strangely, Rembrandt's self-portraits (the experts have assigned a famous Portrait of Rembrandt with a Gorget in the Mauritshuis to Gerrit Dou).  It’s not surprising Rembrandt has kept  an army of art historians busy for years trying to work out what is or is not by the man himself. Perhaps the viewer is all the more bewildered because the show looks just at the first years of Rembrandt’s career, from his first known paintings around 1624 to his departure from Leiden and move to Amsterdam as a successful portrait painter around ten years later.

When it comes to portraits, he can paint brightly-lit, highly detailed formal (and celebratory) portraits as well as any 17th-century Dutch painter, he can paint formal (and rather dull) historical paintings in bright colours, he can even paint genre pictures, which surprised me,  but even from his earliest works, what seems to have captured his enthusiasm are three subjects most of all.

First he showed a decided interest in introspection, in very moody and atmospheric self-portraits. While his public portraits are uniformly lit, his self-portraits show himself in deep shadow. The deep shadow can be very effective, when the image is just of his face. In other works, the darkness is so pervasive, it is difficult to see what is happening.

The commentators describe some of these as major works, but I have to take their word for it. Julian Bell in the TLS goes into raptures over Judas returning the pieces of silver, 1629, but although it is a great theme for a painting, I can see next to nothing from the catalogue reproduction.

As for his portraits, Rembrandt has a fascinating for dressing up, and the more exotic the costume, the better. The result is a strange double effect: the face is exquisitely captured, the sense of introspection is fascinating, but the crazy outfits have almost the opposite effect. Are these paintings serious or a joke? Looking at the crazy Self-Portrait in Oriental Attire with a Poodle, 1631, are we to admire the insightful depiction of his face, or to laugh at the dog in front of him? Who could be so thoughtful and so lacking in self-awareness at the same time? He reminds you of Sherlock Holmes and his daft disguises; except that Sherlock Holmes made no claim to deep significance.

Second, Rembrandt has a fascination with the unglamorous. He takes subjects that would be shunned by most painters and compels you to examine their faces. He draws and paints old people – his father and mother, and a magnificent, reverent portrait of an 83-year-old woman. You cannot ignore an expression like that. 

In common with painting subjects that other painters ignore, if the catalogue is to be believed, Rembrandt is the first painter to depict a non-idealized female (presumably meaning a female not portraying a character such as Eve or Diana):

Third, Rembrandt appears to be deeply religious. He sometimes, in these early works, captures the pathos of some highly emotional religious scenes. And yet, even in these scenes, there are moments that jar completely with the serious subject that you would think is Rembrandt’s motivation for the picture. 

A highly accomplished engraving of the Good Samaritan story, for example, is highly moving – until you notice a dog doing a poo right in the foreground. What kind of mind combines deep emotion and the trivia of genre painting? If this represents the first ten years of Rembrandt’s career, who knows how it will turn out in the end? All you can deduce from these paintings is that here is a highly talented artist, who has learned to paint, draw and etch in several styles. He is obsessed with his own image. Who knows what he will become in the next ten years.