Rembrandt at the National Gallery: the greatest show on earth

At the opening of Rembrandt: The Late Works at the National Gallery (until 18 January), I met a painter friend of mine in the final room. This was, he said, one of the most magnificent exhibitions he had seen in his entire life, which — considering he is perhaps 70 and a frequent visitor of galleries — was praise indeed (and entirely deserved).

Mischievously, I mentioned that he had also been highly enthusiastic about Veronese at the National Gallery a few months ago. ‘Ah, but there is a huge difference between Veronese and Rembrandt,’ he vehemently responded. ‘When you look at a Madonna by Veronese, you see a glamorous model wearing expensive clothes, with Rembrandt’s “Bathsheba” [pointing at the picture in front of us] you can read her thoughts.’

He got it in one. Rembrandt is the supreme painter of the inner life. He brings you close to the people in his pictures. That is one of the lessons the exhibition aims to teach. It and the accompanying book — more a collection of essays than a catalogue — contain sections such as ‘Intimacy’, ‘Inner Conflict’ and ‘Contemplation’. The fundamental premise is that in about 1650–52, Rembrandt (1606–69) changed course, becoming a more idiosyncratic and deeply original artist than he had been before. ‘Late Rembrandt’ therefore begins in what we would now think of as his early middle age when the artist was around 45.

To make their point, the curators have assembled, if not quite all the greatest of Rembrandt’s later works, a sensationally large number of them (one or two more will be added when the exhibition moves to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, next year). Room after room contains a stunning assortment of paintings, drawings and prints, harmonising wonderfully with each other.