Rediscovered Rembrandt masterpiece on view in London for the 1st time

PanARMENIAN.Net - Am I Rembrandt? (8 Nov – 5 March 2017), the final display in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Making Discoveries series brings the Dutch Master’s flamboyant Self-Portrait, Wearing a Feathered Bonnet, 1635, (on loan from Buckland Abbey, National Trust) to London for the first time. The display will also delve deeper into the Gallery's own works by the painter, including Girl at a Window, 1645, shown for the first time with its surviving preparatory study, the Gallery website said.

The Self-Portrait’s status as an authentic work by Rembrandt has been questioned in the past but, following extensive technical analysis and investigative work by the National Trust and leading Rembrandt specialists, the painting was firmly attributed to the master in 2014. Am I Rembrandt? explores how curators and conservators worked together to authenticate the painting, and uses the loan as a starting point to examine the authorship of other works by Rembrandt acquired by the Gallery’s founders in the late 18th century.

Girl at a Window, one of the Gallery’s most celebrated works, will be displayed next to the only known preparatory study for the work (on loan from the Courtauld Institute, London). This will be the first time both painting and study have been displayed together. The comparison reveals how Rembrandt transformed a quick charcoal sketch, made from life, into the finished painting.

Dulwich Picture Gallery’s paintings Jacob de Gheyn III and Girl at a Window are undisputed works by Rembrandt that are often used as a standard by which to judge unsigned paintings from the same periods. Exhibited alongside will be A Young Man, perhaps the Artist’s Son Titus, previously doubted as a genuine Rembrandt due to its degraded condition, and Jacob’s Dream, once a much admired Rembrandt until the restoration process revealed the signature of Rembrandt’s last pupil Aert de Gelder. The display offers a unique insight into the often challenging practise of attributing Old Master works, drawing upon a curator’s knowledge of the artist’s style; surviving documentation relating to the work’s history; and analytical investigations that reveal the artist’s materials and techniques.