When Dutchmen Disagree

When the Metropolitan Museum's Thomas P. F. Hoving dropped the word recently that the Met was planning to "reattribute" several of its Rembrandts, there was a gasp from museumgoers. Fake Rembrandts at the Metropolitan, of all places? It seemed altogether too shocking to be believed. But art scholars in Rembrandt's own Amsterdam, London and Paris scarcely blinked at the news. Like every other great museum, the Met is constantly in the process of re-evaluating and recataloguing the entire collection of paintings, and in fact the current examination of its 31 Rembrandt oils, one of the world's three largest collections (together with those in the Hermitage and the Louvre), is if anything somewhat overdue.

Three of the Met's Rembrandts have been labeled with a question mark since 1954. As many as three more are now getting close inspection, including such works as Man with a Steel Gorget and Old Woman Cutting Her Nails. Nor is the Met alone in giving fresh attention to Rembrandt's paintings. The National Gallery of London in 1960 demoted three of its then 21 Rembrandts to the status of "attributed to" or "school of." The National Gallery of Washington, which currently has 24 Rembrandts, two years ago relabeled its Old Woman Plucking a Fowl as "Rembrandt--Upper part of figure repainted by a later hand."

Some time ago, experts at the Louvre scrutinized a pair of Rembrandt canvases, each of which depicted a philosopher, subsequently decided that one had been done by the master, another by one of his pupils. In the past six months, Chicago's Art Institute has taken a deep breath and concluded that one of its three Rembrandts, Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, is in fact the work of Jan Lievens, a follower of Rembrandt.

Shrinking Output. Internationally, the wide-ranging reassessment of Rembrandt's prodigious output has resulted in a marked contraction of the number of oil paintings unquestionably attributed to the Leiden miller's gifted son. In 1923, the German art historian W. R. Valentiner listed some 700 genuine Rembrandts. In 1942, the Dutch scholar Abraham Bredius pared the total to about 620, and last year the German Kurt Bauch brought the number to 550. The end is not in sight. To be published in the U.S. in October is an other, still more definitive catalogue by The Netherlands' Horst Karel Gerson. At most it accepts, without reservations, 450 Rembrandts.* Many scholars feel that de-attribution has gone too far. In his 1964 study, Harvard's Jakob Rosenberg, considered to be ultraconservative in his choices, relisted 33 Rembrandts that Bredius had disqualified. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently looked at a discredited St. John the Evangelist, concluded that only the saint's beard had been added by a later hand, erased the beard and reinstated the painting as a veritable Rembrandt.

Degrees of Real. The most important reason behind all the scholarly furor is that, with fully accredited Rembrandts costing millions apiece, the 20th century has become far more persnickety in its definition of genuineness than were the 18th and 19th centuries, or for that matter, even Rembrandt's contemporaries. When the artist began plying his trade in Amsterdam in the 1630s, he acquired--as did most successful painters of his day, most notably Rubens--a studio of between 40 and 60 "pupils," who in essence acted as artistic extensions of the master's right arm.

As commissions came pouring in, Rembrandt would direct the composition of a painting, but the pupil, who in many cases was a gifted artist in his own right, would do the work. The master touched up the results and, if the work came up to his standards, even signed the picture. The result, as one National Gallery official in Washington puts it, with a shadow of a smile, is that "there are degrees of real Rembrandts."

Moreover, before the invention of photography, line-for-line copying was not only a common method used by neophyte painters to educate themselves but also a perfectly legitimate means of reproduction. Some 18th and 19th century "copies after Rembrandt" emigrated to the U.S., and were eventually willed to U.S. museums. These, as a rule, were tactfully accepted by most museums, in order not to offend wealthy donors, but rarely hung as Rembrandts, because they were the easiest to weed out. Chemical analyses, known and used for many years, reveal differences in paints and varnishes, since in most cases latter-day copyists did not try to use 17th century materials.

Hidden Handwriting. The knottiest problems lie in distinguishing between oils by Rembrandt and those done by his disciples. Signatures are no guide: not only did Rembrandt sign studio work, but in many cases the original canvas has been cut down--and the signature cut off. Copyists often added the artist's signature for the sake of verisimilitude. Some dealers have even been known to inscribe a spurious "Rembrandt" on top of a genuine "R. H. van Rijn." Though the artist's full name was really Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, the simple "Rembrandt" with which he signed his work in later years is better known than the full signature he used as a young man. Not even documents are much help: only seven letters by Rembrandt, referring to a few paintings, survive.

Most scholars rely on their knowledge of Rembrandt's telltale way of handling a brush, as distinctive as an ordinary man's handwriting. They are convinced that they can recognize Rembrandt's, even though it changed and evolved in the course of his 40-year-career. More information can be gleaned by probing beneath the surface of an oil with X rays and infrared photographs to see how the artist progressed from preliminary sketch to finished oil. In Rembrandt's work, the early draft was always much rougher, more bitter and cruel than the finished work, showing a constant spontaneous response of the artist to his model. Another trait, primarily visible in the portraits of Rembrandt's later period: the bright side of the face is prepared with white underpaint, the shadowy side is built up with glazes.

From the Mists. Magdeleine Hours, director of the Louvre's outstanding scientific laboratory, argues that Rembrandt's "handwriting" may be superior to that of some of his followers only because it is better known. It is her hope that more exhaustive study of the dubious Rembrandts will serve to identify fully the other painters in his circle, who may thus emerge as memorable artists on their own. The genius of Georges de La Tour, she points out, was overlooked by scholars for centuries simply because most of his finest paintings were attributed to Caravaggio, Velasquez or other artists.

Though reattribution of a painting from Rembrandt to his pupil Carel Fabritius or Jan Lievens may knock thousands of dollars from its current market value, the loss is only a paper one. The picture itself is no less beautiful. Indeed, as the name of its creator emerges from the mists in which history has shrouded it, his painting's value may even appreciate faster than that of a known Rembrandt.

Rather than haggling endlessly over the fine points of attribution, some museum directors are now trusting their own judgment, taste and intuition. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, for instance, recently purchased, as its 22nd Rembrandt, a Holy Family from a private English collection; the painting is challenged by Rembrandt Experts Bauch and Gerson. Snaps Rijksmuseum Director Dr. A. Van Schendel: "We disagree--it does not matter. A good painting is a good painting."

*Rembrandt is not the only artist up for reattribution. The Worcester Art Museum, of Worcester, Mass., engaged in re-evaluating its collection, said last week that it expects to relabel about one-fourth of its 321 European paintings, including ones formerly attributed to Turner, Constable and Courbet.

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