There's something about Rembrandt that
really makes me think about filmmaking today
He was such a master of capturing emotion
and he did that through light he tells stories through light
for instance in one single painting he can
convey shame surprise shock different
characters responding to a situation in different ways
What a filmmaker might take
an hour and a half, two hours to tell
Rembrandt condenses into one work of art
and he controls the emotions
through his approach to light.
There's a daring question that we raised with this exhibition
if Rembrandt was alive today would he have been a filmmaker
more specifically a cinematographer rather than a painter?
and to address that question we started
talking to a cinematographer to see what he thought.
Peter Suschitzky is one of the word's leading directors of photography
who has worked on such
major films like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Mars Attacks!
he's the cinematographer for David Cronenberg
and he references the Old Masters and
Old Master lighting in his work...
Every frame a Rembrandt was something that I
heard when I first started working as a
cinematographer on my very first movie at the age of 22
It was a mixture of fun and reference at the same time
Because the name Rembrandt became a yardstick
for cinematographers. Rembrandt was a painter
that everybody had heard of even
if they weren't really interested in painting.
There's a small scale painting in this exhibition lent by Her Majesty the Queen
which shows Mary Magdalene arriving at the tomb
intending to embalm the body of Christ
and finding the tomb empty.
It was a painting intended to be
housed in somebody's personal home for
them to reflect on it to pray in front of it.
And so we wanted to draw out the
emotion from this painting, we wanted to
tap into the idea that this is a painting that gradually dawns on you
meaning of it, at the same time that the
dawn light in the painting breaks over
Jerusalem in the distance
One of the paintings experiences a change in light
I wanted it to be like a dawn and then a dusk falling into night.
And we do allow enough time for the viewer to stand
or sit in front of the painting in full light
But it does disappear and it does get reborn
I really think it's quite magical on this particular painting
We invited ERCO lighting to come in and work with us to
install a new LED lighting system in the
exhibition space
to ensure that we could show Rembrandt at his very best
In his own day, Rembrandt was incredibly famous
Everyone wanted to own a work by him whether it
was an etching or painting or to have their portrait painted by him.
Rembrandt's house was so important to the creation of his work
For the first time he had access to this very large studio
In that studio he had these very high windows
which gave him access to this
brilliant light
Rembrandt overspent in order to buy the
house it took all the money he had and
it gave him access to this wonderful light
but it came at the expense of his financial ruin
so ultimately it was both the making and breaking of him
Light is crucial to Rembrandt's storytelling
He often used it to allow a narrative to unfold
And we can see that clearly in The Denial of St. Peter
There, the focal point of the story is this
maidservant holding a candle
He uses that there to illustrate the moment where
St Peter has denied knowing Christ and then
we move round and it's only after you've
stayed with the painting for quite a while
that we see in the shadows the figure
of Christ. So we've got that sort of use of light
to allow narrative to unfold
you've actually got multiple moments in that story
happening at the same time
but light allows them to unfold in sequence which is very interesting
The best thing for me about Rembrandt is how real he is.
He isn't 100% perfect
He throws in sometimes hands that look too big
or figures that look a bit ungainly
and that mirrors his personality.
We would say that he didn't live an ideal
life he didn't always treat the people
around him perfectly and yet somehow he
channeled that any loss or anger or frustration
he channeled into his art
and I think that's what makes it so real for us.
In Rembrandt I've always found a great painter
who says something about life, about humanity
in a beautiful painterly way
The figures always seem to be lit
from the inside
and they are always in a pool of light
you don't see the background very often
or you have to fill in details yourself.
On the end wall of the final room in
this exhibition we have for the first
time ever three of Rembrandt's paintings
of the women in his life
that have never hung together before.
The first is 'A Woman in Bed'
and it is a deeply sexual painting. It is a woman
beckoning to probably him to the artist
to come put down his paintbrush and join her in bed.
On the right-hand side of the
wall there is a painting probably of his
partner Hendrickje Stoffels bathing in a stream
and then the central painting on that wall
is our 'Girl at a window' from
the Dulwich Picture Gallery collection
'Girl at a Window' has always been one of our
most iconic paintings
she's the painting which people always seek her out
so it's really interesting for
us to see her in this exhibition in a
quite different context
working with Peter was a fascinating
experience because he comes to these
works of art from a completely different angle to me
he just sees them in a completely different way
when we were looking at the painting of
'The Denial of St. Peter' and he was
looking at what where does the light
source coming from and how are you
creating that effect from his own
experiences of working on films I mean
that's something which I understand but
would never have thought of immediately
when looking at that work you know
For me it was about the story and then
looking at Rembrandt's technique so
to sort of bring those two things together I think has been really enriching to the exhibition.
I've always loved painting but I didn't know anything about mounting an exhibition
It's been absolutely exciting and thrilling
It's like being allowed to peer through a curtain
at a world I was aware of but didn't know anything about.