Australian Left Review

Article Title

Rembrandt

Authors

Abstract

THIS YEAR we commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of the death of Rembrandt, one of the most original and humane of artists. As well as Rembrandt’s self-portrait of 1660, we reproduce here a selection of his drawings. Rembrandt lived in a period of middle-class individualism, when works of art were for the first time becoming commodities ra th e r than the products of patronage. The Dutch burghers looked to artists to celebrate their new selfostccm and national pride. This was achieved through portraiture, landscape, scenes of social joy or domestic rectitude, and still-life paintings expressing Holland's growing prosperity.