Reflecting on Rembrandt: 500 Years of Etching

For the 350th anniversary of the death of Rembrandt van Rijn, this exhibition of prints selected from the museum’s collection and created by students in the Lamar Dodd School of Art commemorates the artist’s profound impact, especially as a printmaker. For the majority of students in ARST 3315 Printmaking: Etching, the works in this exhibition represent some of their first efforts with this demanding medium and a response to the tradition of viewing Rembrandt as a guide and standard of achievement. Orchestrating this demonstration of influence, students in ARHI4310/6310 Northern Baroque Art combined these contemporary works with prints by Rembrandt, his peers and his followers. Their choices reveal both the extent of Rembrandt’s own interests in technique and composition as well as the impact these had on artists and viewers to follow. For them and for us, Rembrandt’s art can be a mirror for self-reflection or a fragment of a kaleidoscopic world view.

Image: John Stockton de Martelly (American, 1903 – 1979), “Rembrandt at a Window,” 1929. Etching. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; The Mullis Collection, Gift of Carl and Marian Mullis in honor of their son Carl W. Mullis, IV, class of ’01 GMOA. 2001.93