Grand Gestures: Celebrating Rembrandt

On the four hundredth anniversary of his birth, Rembrandt von Rijn (1606-1669) remains one of the most and imaginative and inventive of artists. This exhibition celebrated the virtuosity and perspicacity of this Dutch painter through exploring the great sense of drama evoked in his art. In exhibit were thirty-seven works on paper drawn from the permanent collection of the Loeb and from additional sources. Rembrandt rendered these landscapes, religious and theatrical scenes, portraits, and scenes from everyday life with a fluid facility and relished the drama of a subject whether a threatening storm, a heavenly vision, or a nocturnal Nativity. A master storyteller and admirer of theater, he imbued his prints and drawings with tell-tale lines and light that echo the tenor of a subject, whether an ecstatic vision of angels or a very earthbound farm scene. His ready insight into ephemeral states of mind is still unequaled.

This exhibition was organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and honored then-College President Frances Fergusson and her many contributions to Vassar on the occasion of her retirement after twenty years of service. The exhibition was made possible by the generous support of The Smart Family Foundation, Inc. It showcased many of the most important etchings by Rembrandt in the Felix M. Warburg collection of Old Master prints. Given to Vassar College in 1941, the gift is considered one of the highlights of the permanent collection. Accompanying the exhibition was the catalogue of the Warburg Collection at Vassar, "The Felix M. Warburg Collection: A Legacy of Discernment", published in 1995 and authored by Dorothy Limouze and Susan Donahue Kuretsky. This exhibition also featured the fourth state (of five) of one of Rembrandt's most impressive and complex prints, "Christ Crucified Between the Two Thieves: The Three Crosses", on loan from David Tunick Inc., New York, and a late, masterful ink drawing, "Christ Finding the Apostles Asleep", borrowed from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.