Rocznik Historii Sztuki (33.2008)

RHMBRANI) IOWSKA „SZTUKA WYKLI;'I'A"

245

malarstwa. Dziewiętnastowieczna historiografia holenderska, budująca odrębną wobec południowych Nider-
landów tożsamość i nowoczesne pojęcie patriotyzmu, uczyniła znakomitego rodaka pierwszym malarzem
XVII stulecia i wizytówką Holandii. W 1852 r. wystawiono mu brązowy pomnik autorstwa Louisa Royera
w sercu Amsterdamu, a w 1898 r. w Stedelijk Muséum zorganizowano pierwszą Wystawę Rembrandtowską,
uświetniającą obchody wstąpienia na tron królowej Wilhelminy113. Jako „buntownik" i genialny indywidu-
alista wszedł Rembrandt do kanonu europejskiej historii sztuki i zajął miejsce mistrza nowoczesnych.

REMBRANDT'S "CURSED ART". THE MYTH OF REBELLIOUS GENIUS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY

ARTISTIC CRITICISM AND PAINTING POLEMICS WITH ACADEMISM

Summary

The purpose of this paper is to summarize Rembrandt's fortune critique in the 19th century. The main theoretical premises for
the interprétation of his art were borrowed from the earlier historiography, which focused on the following issues: mastery of color.
neglect of proper technical procédures, lack of fini, Iow, vulgar subjects - a conséquence of the lack of éducation, good taste, and
the rejection of classical norms of beauty, in particular in the depiction of human body. These characteristics already made of Rem-
brandt's art in the 17th century a paradigm of artistic nonconformism, trespassing and denying académie canons and conventions.
They legitimated ail the antiacademic attitudes in the 19th century but were also in a way assimilated into the mainstream of aca-
démie painting in the second half of that century.

Rembrandt has been called already "the first heretic in art" by the 17th century Dutch poet Andries Pels but still in the 20th
century the legend of "artiste maudit" was revived by André Malreaux. In fact, the greatest critics of Rembrandt in the 19th century
Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Thoré-Biirger, Edmond and Jules de Concourt, Hyppolite Taine or Eugène Fromentin
praised and admired the Dutch master as an original painter of human émotions, a master of dramatic light and shadow. AU the moral
and formai values of Rembrandt's art as an antithesis of officiai académie doctrine started to be a notion of modernity for ro-
mantics, realists and even expressionists. Imagination and color (considered as a free, spontaneous and expressive way of painting)
predestinated Rembrandt for the role of a patron of romanticism but also - in political terms - a figure of freedom and independ-
ence. This individuality was to be a héritage of the Dutch history: of a small nation who has not only thrown off the yoke of the
Spanish empire in the 17th century but it was also able to create an original, native, national school of art, différent of any other Ital-
ian or Flemish tradition. Rembrandt with his innate sensé of freedom became a pattern of genius, giving an artistic license for "heresy"
in art to many of the 19th century artists, among others Georges Michel, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, James Ensor, Lovis
Corinth and Max Liebermann. The "cliché" of an artist who is lonely, incompréhensible by the contemporaries, but faithful to his
own rules became a myth, a part of his literary vie romancée. At the same time the mastership of Rembrandt's painting, drawing
and graphie art was recognized by history of art; in 1852 there was erected in Amsterdam the first statue of the painter. Scientists as
Edouard Koloff or Carel Vosmaer started to publish their research on the old master and in 1898 it took place in Stedelijk Muséum
in Amsterdam the first monographie exhibition of Rembrandt.

Translated by Agnieszka Rosales Rodrigez

P.J.J. van T h i e 1, De Rembrandt-tentoonstelling van 1898, „Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum", 40. 1992, nr 1, s. 11 71.