On 12 November 2008 the Getty Museum launched Rembrandt in Southern California, a virtual exhibition intended to stimulate both residents and visitors alike to explore the remarkable holdings of Rembrandt paintings in the area. Initiated by the Getty, it is a long-term collaborative project between five institutions, and will feature special programming. See the project website at http://www.rembrandtinsocal.org
Rembrandt in Southern California is a virtual exhibition of 14 paintings by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) on view in five Southern California museums. This collaborative presentation offers a unique guide to exploring these significant holdings and provides information and suggested connections and points of comparison for each work.
Southern California is home to the third-largest assemblage of Rembrandt paintings in the United States, with notable strength in works from the artist’s dynamic early career in Leiden and Amsterdam. Beginning with J. Paul Getty’s enthusiastic 1938 purchase of Portrait of Marten Looten (given to LACMA in 1953; no. 8 in the Virtual Exhibition), the paintings have been collected over the short span of 70 years and are today housed in five museums, four of which were forged from private collections: the Hammer Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles; the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena; and the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego. Together these works attest to the remarkable range of Rembrandt’s achievement across his long career.
