From the museum website
The 400th birthday of the great Netherlands master will be celebrated in 2006. To mark this occasion the Kupferstichkabinett of the Alte Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum is to put 100 prints from its own collection on show.
No other artist before him had been so intensively concerned with the etching in all its aspects, in particular with the so-called drypoint (intaglio) and he developed both techniques to perfection. His printed graphic works are not simply sketches, studies or reproductions, but a pictorial art form characterised by an extraordinary expressive power and artistic spirit. Rembrandt’s development in his etchings is closely linked to his work as a painter. The etching is the appropriate printed means of graphic expression for the artist. To him the copper plate of an etching was like a sheet of paper on which he produced his drawing.
All the important subjects dealt with in Rembrandt’s oeuvre are represented in the Alte Galerie collection: portraits, among them an extraordinarily large number of self-portraits, landscapes and historical subjects, in particular narrative illustrations from the Old and New Testament. The Alte Galerie also includes such celebrated works as the so-called “Hundred Guilders Print” or the “Great Re-awakening of Lazarus”.
Most of the work originates from the important collection of etchings assembled by the Viennese lawyer Josef Ritter von Heintl (1807–1871), who left them as a bequest to the Alte Galerie in 1871. By means of stamps on the rear of some of the prints it is possible to trace the provenance of a few prints back through the 18th century. The watermarks of the various papers used have been photographed in a special research project in cooperation with the Restoration and Conservation Department of the Vienna Academy of Graphic Arts. This will make it possible to establish the origin of the paper and the date when it was produced, thus also making it possible to sort out reprints and forgeries.
Catalogue
Rembrandt (1606-1669): Radierungen
Ulrich Becker, with essay on the trade in paper in 17th-century Holland by Helmgard Holle and Manfred Schreiner
Catalogue of exhibition held in Graz (Landesmuseum Joanneum) 2006
304 pp.
Graz (Landesmuseum Joanneum) 2006
ISBN 3-902095-07-5
From the museum website
Der Katalog stellt insgesamt 103 Radierungen Rembrandts aus dem Kupferstichkabinett der Alten Galerie vor. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Sammlungsgeschichte und vor allem der Wasserzeichenforschung. In Zusammenarbeit mit der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien wurden 41 Wasserzeichen in Röntgenaufnahmen festgehalten, die im Katalog in Originalgröße abgebildet sind. Ein ausführlicher Artikel von Helmgard Holle und Manfred Schreiner (erstmals im deutschsprachigen Raum) beschreibt Herstellung und Handel von Druckpapieren in Holland im 17. Jahrhundert.