Group portraits

Rembrandt van Rijn is agreed to have been the greatest Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. The most versatile of artists, he excelled in all the genres while aspiring to be recognised as a 'history painter'. Although the opportunity to paint altarpieces was denied him in the officially Calvinist United Provinces where the interiors of the churches had been whitewashed, he was able to supply private collectors with biblical scenes. More mythological and biblical paintings were produced in Holland than we sometimes think, and Rembrandt received a number of such commissions. But the bulk of his practice was in portraits, and his ambition may explain why he began to invest them - especially the group portraits of corporate bodies - with the vivid semblance of narrative. His superb pictorial imagination and unparalleled technique enabled him to introduce drama and mystery by bold contrasts of light and shadow and of texture, from the delicately translucent to the thickly three-dimensional. His surfaces, unlike those of most of his contemporaries, are as alive as the characters he portrays. Not only was he able to evoke specific emotions to suit the action depicted, he convinces us that every figure he paints has the capacity to feel.