Customer Reviews

Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship focuses on a sixty-five year period from 1870 to 1935, when the number of works attributed to Rembrandt's oeuvre grew to a bloated 700 paintings, due in part to market demand for the artist's work, particularly in America. Scallen offers a detailed analysis of the accomplishments and methods of the leading Rembrandt scholars of the period: Wilhelm von Bode, Abraham Bredius, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, and Wilhelm Valentiner. Scallen shows how the scholarship of all four, though rigorous and sophisticated, was in part influenced by market forces, as the expert attributions they issued (or "expertises") directly affected the value of art works and were, moreover, not issued for free. Scallen provides a sober examination of the Rembrandt literature of the period, including the archival work of Bredius and Hofstede de Groot, the various catalogues raisonnees, and interpretive articles - but, equally interesting, she also captures the personalities of the individual scholars and maps out the ways in which their personal animosities and intellectual turf wars often shaped the intimate details of their work and opinions. In light of the ongoing and controversial endeavors of the Rembrandt Research Project, Scallen's thoroughly documented and historical contextualized study of the attributions made by this earlier generation of experts gives rich food for thought. That said, it is definitely a book for specialists only.