In this special exhibition at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, which is organized in collaboration with the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the international impact of Rembrandt as a graphic artist is the central theme.

Rembrandt valued printmaking as an art form in its own right. Plus, he was a true innovator. As an artist he constantly sought out new technical amd artistic possibilities. This is evident not only from his paintings, but also from the more than three hundred etchings he made. His artistic quests lead to an incredible rich, divers and virtuoso etched oeuvre, which inspired many other artists – during and after his lifetime – to produce etchings as well.

This exhibition will allow visitors to familiarize themselves not only with Rembrandt’s exceptional printmaking, but also with his enormous impact on later generations. We will follow the development over the centuries, from the seventeenth and eighteenth into the nineteenth Century European (graphic) artists. And we will learn about the context in which these other artists turned to Rembrandt for inspiration to create their own artworks.

Names of artists who are represented are amongst many others: Ferdinand Bol, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Georg Friedrich Schmidt, Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine, Francisco Goya, Charles-Émile Jacque, Édouard Manet, Félix Buhot, Francis Seymour Haden, Mary Casset, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

The selection of some 130 objects mainly originate from the two museum collections, with some additions from Dutch private and Japanese institutional Lenders. A catalogue accompanies the project, containing two essays by the exhibition curators Asuka Nakada and Leonore van Sloten (published in Japanese and English), plus object texts (in Japanese only).