Rembrandt

"A Rembrandt face is a face partially eclipsed; and the nose, bright and obvious, thrusting into the riddle of halftones, serves to focus the viewer's attention upon, and to dramatize, the division between a flood of light--an overwhelming clarity--and a brooding duskiness. If the sitter is the lead actor of a performance (which is what a portrait is in essence), then the nose is the understudy on the stage of his face."
Excerpt from Rembrandt's Nose: Of Flesh and Spirit in the Master's Portraits, by Michael Taylor, published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

ACTIVE BACKLIST

REMBRANDT'S NOSE: OF FLESH AND SPIRIT IN THE MASTER’S PORTRAITS
By Michael Taylor.
D.A.P./DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS, INC.
ISBN: 9781933045443 | US $27.50
Pub Date: 7/1/2007
Active | In stock

REMBRANDT AS PRINTMAKER
Essay by Martin Royalton-Kisch. Foreword by Roger Malbert and Susan May.
HAYWARD GALLERY
ISBN: 9781853322556 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Active | In stock

REMBRANDT'S JOURNEY
Essays by Clifford S. Ackley, Ronni Baer, Thomas E. Rassieur and William W. Robinson.
MFA PUBLICATIONS
ISBN: 9780878466771 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 11/2/2003
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

REMBRANDT: DRAWINGS FROM THE BERLIN KUPFERSTICHKABINETT
Text by Holm Bevers.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775719247 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

Rembrandt

Rembrandt: Drawings from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett

Text by Holm Bevers.
Published by Hatje Cantz

The Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was one of the greatest draftsman of all time. Even small and quick sketches reveal his incomparable skill in capturing compositions, figures, groups, human gestures, facial expressions and landscapes with just a few strokes. Although some of Rembrandt's drawings served as preparatory studies for paintings and etchings, most are conceptual works in which he investigated motifs of movement and expression, recording ideas for his own works and those produced by pupils in his studio. Encompassing works from Rembrandt's entire career, this compact and exquisitely produced monograph presents the full spectrum of the genres and materials used in the drawings. In addition, recent scholarship has revealed that many drawings once attributed to Rembrandt were in fact done by his pupils. Of the 126 drawings in the important Berlin collection from which this volume draws its illustrations, only 55 are still considered original works by the master. Each of these is presented here within a scholarly text by Holm Bevers. As well, a selection of 25 drawings by Rembrandt's pupils is examined in light of the most recent research.

Rembrandt's Nose: Of Flesh and Spirit in the Master’s Portraits

By Michael Taylor.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

The year 2006 marked the 400th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest portrait painters that ever lived, the Dutch seventeenth-century master, Rembrandt. Although Rembrandt is among the most important artists in western history, and perhaps our greatest draftsman, no one has ever, until now, been able to pinpoint exactly how it was that he so precisely and effortlessly captured the spiritual essence of his subjects. This insightful, sophisticated and yet accessible illustrated reading-format study, written by the preeminent scholar and translator Michael Taylor, will be as enlightening and delightful to Rembrandt scholars as to lay readers. Taylor looks at Rembrandt's self-portraits, his society portraits, historical paintings and biblical scenes, and identifies how it was that the artist rendered his subjects so alive, so full of earthy, flesh-and-blood vitality--which all boils down to his treatment of the nose. Rembrandt's Nose is a gem of a book, an intimate, candid and extremely entertaining engagement with the works of art themselves, interwoven with racy historical snippets that contextualize the artist's breakthroughs and techniques. It includes some 49 reproductions, as well as a complete chronology of Rembrandt's life.
"Michael Taylor creates a series of portraits that are as full of ingenuity, passion, and attention to quirky detail as Rembrandt's paintings themselves. Art history has seldom been so entertaining and enlightening." --Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome, The Judgment of Paris, and Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling.
"Michael Taylor's starting point for this enchanting essay is a feature that is as plain as could be, and is central to the destiny and the mortal features and aspirations of his great subject, the painter. Taylor's meditation unfolds with grace of language and insight, and a familiar use of what can be known now of Rembrandt and the world he revealed." --W.S. Merwin, former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and recipient of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
"Zooming in on the center of Rembrandt's faces, Michael Taylor finds meanings we all have missed. What appeals to me most in his lyrical appreciation is that he writes not only about what Rembrandt's noses look like, but also how they smell and breathe." --Gary Schwartz, author of The Rembrandt Book.
"This is the best kind of criticism: informed without being pedantic, passionate but elegant, witty and earnest at the same time…It is worth a whole stack of weighty tomes on the master." --Mark Polizzotti, Publisher, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and author of Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton.

Rembrandt as Printmaker

Essay by Martin Royalton-Kisch. Foreword by Roger Malbert and Susan May.
Published by Hayward Gallery

Rembrandt van Rijn's paintings made him the star of the seventeenth-century Dutch golden age, but he was also an extraordinarily productive and original printmaker. In more than 300 known etchings, he covered the full range of subjects and styles for which he is celebrated, including self-portraits, scenes from the Bible, landscapes, vignettes of everyday life and character studies. Each of his prints is both a beautiful work in itself and an X-ray of the strategies of composition and scene-setting that went into his paintings. Rembrandt as Printmaker presents 69 of Rembrandt's finest prints from The British Museum, which is widely considered to hold the world's broadest collection. It is published on the occasion of the four-hundred-year anniversary of the artist's birth.

Rembrandt's Journey

Painter, Draftsman, Etcher

Essays by Clifford S. Ackley, Ronni Baer, Thomas E. Rassieur and William W. Robinson.
Published by MFA Publications

Rembrandt changed the course of art history not only as a painter but also as a draftsman and printmaker. His output of some 300 etchings and drypoints represents a lifelong commitment to printmaking unequaled by any other seventeenth-century painter and comparable only to Picasso in our own time. Rembrandt's Journey unfolds the richness and diversity of Rembrandt's career as an etcher in the context of his paintings and drawings. Illustrated with nearly 200 works in all three media, this book traces the remarkable evolution of Rembrandt's art over four decades, from the robust physical energy of his early productions to the breadth, simplicity and meditative beauty of his later work. It establishes new and important connections among these works and among the three media that the artist explored throughout his career. It encompasses the wide range of his vision, from the tragic and spiritual to the earthy and comic. And it gives full due to Rembrandt's narrative sensibilities, showing how he endowed his figures (particularly in biblical scenes) with unprecedented psychological nuance and vividness. Published to accompany the first comprehensive American survey of his work in decades, Rembrandt's Journey offers a fresh, authoritative view of this endlessly familiar, yet still unknown, artist.