Rembrandt? Not Rembrandt?

The exhibition »Rembrandt? Not Rembrandt?«  is a joint project being organized by the Hamburg Kunsthalle and the Bremen Kunsthalle. For the first time, these two concurrent shows will bring together works of art by Rembrandt and his pupils drawn from the collections of both museums and present them to a wider public. The exhibition in Bremen will focus on drawings, the Hamburg Kunsthalle on paintings.

How do we recognize a Rembrandt? What are the aesthetic aspects which make his paintings different from those of his pupils and successors? What importance did the artists and collectors of the time place on questions of style?

The exhibitions in Hamburg and Bremen offer an excellent survey of the artists who, as colleagues, pupils or employees, had direct contact to Rembrandt, which set the standards for the generation of artists to come. The pupils’ response to their teacher is evident in the form of repetition, in terms of style, subject matter and composition. This double exhibition attempts to identify the similarities and the differences upon which we base our judgement »Rembrandt? Not Rembrandt?« Two of the twenty paintings are undoubtless works of Rembrandt. Analysing the paintings of his pupils (Dou, van Eeckhout, Lievens, De Poorter etc.) puts our powers of aesthetic discrimination to the test. An exhibition from »Freunde der Kunsthalle e.V«. With kind support of Deutsche Unilever GmbH.