Art-Rembrandt-1629 & 1659 Self Portraits TB

Please drop this item in rural or Premium Member Only caches.  Do not drop it in an urban cache or leave it behind at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; this prevents the chain and tag tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take this travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission needed to leave the US.

This is one of a series of travel bugs made to recognize paintings seen, and admired by the bug owner. Digital copies of these two paintings were downloaded from the internet. The copies were reduced in size and proportions cropped to accommodate the laminating materials available to the owner. Regrettably these processes diminish the efforts of the artist. One truly must see the originals in person to fully appreciate the work. The text below is a mixture of my own observations and material gleaned from the internet (mostly Wikipedia and Web Gallery).

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was the most famous the three preeminent painters of the Dutch Golden Age. The other two were Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. All three produced magnificent portraits, but they all produced works of other subjects. Rembrandt painted at least 21 self-portraits in the period 1626 to 1669. Many were a means to try out new techniques of expressing light, others were studies in exotic costumes to perhaps illustrate technical competence and in still others he used himself as a model to portray classical or religious figures.

The left portrait on the travel bug was completed in 1629 and hangs in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. It shows a self-assured 23 year old youth while he was still working in his home town of Leiden.  In it he already employs the dark background with the subject in oblique light for which he became so famous.  Soon he would move to Amsterdam and make it big, as they say. The rightmost painting was done in 1659 and is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. It shows a man 30 years later who, among other troubles, had lived well beyond his means and was in bankruptcy. Rembrandt was also an accomplished lithographer. His home in Amsterdam is a museum and has a display of his lithographic works. And, occasionally, there is a demonstration of the craft as it was done in his time.