"LIEVENS: A DUTCH MASTER REDISCOVERED" OPENS AT MAM

By Michael Horne

The Member Preview Celebration of Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, Thursday, February 6th 2009 at the Milwaukee Art Museum drew a hefty crowd to the Quadracci Pavilion on a chill winter's evening.
Hundreds at a time milled through the galleries hung with scores of canvases, prints and drawings. Their numbers were exceeded only by the throngs lined up at the buffet tables, patiently awaiting their turn at the plates. Foodstuffs included such items as pineapple and cheese -- long popular in Dutch still life paintings -- along with Pierogis, that staple of Netherlandish cuisine.
The exhibition originated at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and was curated by Arthur K. Wheelock, the curator of Northern Baroque Art there. Wheelock is a Knight Commander of the Order of Leopold I, and accordingly cuts quite a figure in Belgian court circles.
He was at the opening, as was his Milwaukee counterpart, Laurie Winters, curator of Earlier European Art at the museum. Ms. Winters is listed as the organizing curator for the show here. The duties of an "organizing curator" include traveling internationally, perhaps with a portrait as your seatmate ["Lievens on a Jet Plane"]. Some idea of the scope of her job can be found in the title of one of Ms. Winters's monographs: "Legal Machinery of War and Exhibitions." Much the same, I'd gather.

The show's subtitle, "Out of Rembrandt's Shadow," gives you an idea of what Lievens was up against, both figuratively and literally. Rembrandt could pack as much fury into a shadow as J.M.W. Turner could into a sunset. Lievens kept pace.
Rembrandt and Lievens knew each other from childhood, and studied under the same master. Their careers progressed in tandem, we learn from the gallery guide.
"They often used the same models, including one another; [Wheelock recently discovered the earliest-ever image of Rembrandt in a painting in this exhibition] and frequently took up the same or analogous subjects.
"By the early 1630s confusion had already arisen over the attribution of their work."
Lievens was considered the more precocious talent, and was better known as a youth. Wheelock notes, "By the age of twelve he was already a rising star, a child prodigy who impressed patrons with his diligence and talent." When it comes to posterity, however, Rembrandt has him beat.
Paradoxically, the intense scrutiny of Rembrandt and his works has proven bad for him and good for Lievens.
Over the course of more than three decades the Rembrandt Research Project has undertaken perhaps the most exhaustive and systematic analysis of the work of any artist in history.
As a result some new Rembrandts have been found. Far more common, however, are hundreds of works once attributed to Rembrandt that are no longer considered authentic. They tend to fall into three categories, as a whole:

1. Forgeries
2. "School of" Rembrandt
3. Lievens

Of the latter category, nine of the Lievens paintings in the show here were until recently believed to be Rembrandts.
Among them is the provocatively titled "Rembrandt's Mother." Although the sitter is likely she, it is easy to see why it might have been considered to be by the master. Who would have guessed that Lievens was painting his buddy's ma?
The painting had been owned by Milwaukeean Dr. Alfred Bader, a noted Rembrandt scholar and collector, who will be giving a presentation entitled "The Joys of Collecting," on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 as part of the exhitition's lecture series.
Unlike some others who have seen their Rembrandts de-attributed, which must certainly be one of the Agonies of Collecting, Bader and others in his situation are fortunate their works can now be attributed to Lievens, rather than "School of" or, worst, "forgery."

They will be among the primary financial beneficiaries of renewed scholarship of Lievens, and his establishment as an artist of the first rank on his own account. [This will be the subject of yet another lecture entitled "Rembrandt / Not Rembrandt / Lievens," Thursday, March 19th 2009 by Walter Liedtke, Curator of Northern Baroque art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ]
A recent sale of a Lievens (not in the exhibition) brought a record $5 million. A scene of card players (in the exhibition) recently sold for $2 million.
It will probably be worth even more, now that Rembrandt has been identified as one of those pictured.
Poor Lievens! Still hard to get out of that shadow, but this exhibition puts new light on a great talent.

A NOTE ON THE EXHIBITION

Opening night, like Gallery Night, is not always an ideal time to see pictures at an exhibition, especially those that merit close examination, or a long, contemplative gaze. Fortunately, the show will be here until April 26th, 2009, before traveling to the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam. The museum has a new policy of including special exhibitions like this one in the price of admission without an additional fee. Milwaukee County residents are admitted free on Wednesdays.
The exhibition includes several galleries of paintings, some monumental in scope, and displaying a wide range of subject matter.
In fact the paintings show the Dutch influence in providing the subject matters now considered standard -- landscapes, still lifes, portraits, bourgeois domestic scenes and exotic figures. With the significant exception of Caravaggio, the bad boy of the Italian Renaissance, and a noted influence of Rembrandt and Lievens, much Southern European art of the period was tied to royal and church patronage, and was accordingly limited.
While the Italians produced acre upon acre of canvas saints oozing blood, and where a landscape is stuck in a corner and obscured by an angel's wing, the protestant Dutch wandered much wider in terms of subject matter, to our relief.
However, to this reviewer, the highlight of the show is not in the paintings, but in the woodcuts (some unique images), the etchings and especially the drawings, including ink, crayon and pencil. It is in their fluidity and technical accomplishment that Lievens may unquestioningly take his place among the Dutch Masters. Rembrandt's elephant has got nothing on him.
--Michael Horne