Art: Rembrandt & His School

Of all great painters, one of the supposedly most productive was Rembrandt Harmens Van Rijn (1606-1669). In the galleries of the world, 800 paintings of knights, beggars, saints, painters, are signed in a dark scrawl, Rembrandt f* There are 1,600 drawings, cornered with the same letters, 300 etchings. For nearly 300 years the world has been assured that these letters did not lie, that the energy which the Dutchman put into the figures on his canvas had enabled him also to produce a superhuman number of pictures. Yet there have been at times doubts cast on the genuineness of some of these. Four years ago Professor John Charles Van Dyke of the Department of Art & Archeology of Rutgers University published a book in which he asserted his statistics upon Rembrandt’s paintings. Last week he published a second volume which completed his findings made over a period of twelve years. Of the paintings, 40 are real Rembrandts, of the drawing, 60; of the etchings, 40. None of these are in the U. S. Said Dr. Van Dyke further: Some of these works, on the grounds of style, I attribute to Rembrandt pupils. … In many uther cases I cannot say whose they are. Some of these etchings and drawings which have been wrongly attributed to Rembrandt are very fine works. Some are worthless… . He had 72 pupils. What has become of their work? Nearly all of it has been attributed to Rembrandt. . . . About 50 years ago the great modern appreciation of Rembrandt began and with it came the tendency to attribute to Rembrandt personally all works of his school. … It is not my purpose to attack collectors or art dealers or anybody else. . . .” Not to be confused with Professor Henry van Dyke of Prince ton, Professor John C. Van Dyke, 71, has been on the Rutgers faculty since 1889. Careful, deliberate, scholarly, he has published besides his works on Rembrandt an able History of Painting, a recent series of New Guides to Old Masters, treatises on esthetics, monographs on various schools of painting. Critics, dealers, collectors, museum heads who pay fabulous prices for supposed Rembrandts, disagree with the theories of Dr. John Charles Van Dyke. At Chicago, William C. McKee, head of the print department of the Art Institute, stated that the three supposed Rembrandts in the Institute are genuine. “Dr. Van Dyke is not taken very seriously in art circles,” said he.

*Rembrandt fecit, i. e., Rembrandt made.