The Rembrandt House’s staging of Rembrandt’s Social Network marks the start of Rembrandt Year 2019, three and a half centuries after his death. This exhibition will be devoted to Rembrandt’s friends and acquaintances and the role they played in his life and work – for even a great artist like Rembrandt was no lonely genius. A good networker, he used his social network actively and determinedly. He had a family and friends who helped him, who bought his paintings, who lent him money and challenged him artistically.
Rembrandt’s social network will be explored through some major figures in his life – his childhood friend Jan Lievens, the art connoisseur Jan Six, Abraham Francen, who stood by him in difficult times, artist friends such as Roelant Roghman and, of course, his wife’s family, the Uylenburghs, his ‘blood relations’. The informality of the paintings, drawings and prints is striking and the exhibition includes work by Rembrandt that has rarely if ever been seen in the Netherlands.
