In his paintings, Rembrandt shows an intense understanding of the possibilities of light and shade, deepening their impact through contrasts, developing from his earliest works towards his later, looser style. From the drama of his biblical scenes, to the meditative inner light of some of his late portraits, Rembrandt could transform the everyday to the sublime through his palette, his use of texture and his placing of the smallest highlight.

One of the world’s greatest printmakers, Rembrandt’s handling of light and darkness expressed purely through the medium of lines and the space around them, was unsurpassed. He achieved extraordinary richness of texture and contrast. During his lifetime, he was as famed for his prints as for his oil paintings, being better known in Britain as a printmaker. 

An inspired experimenter, Rembrandt explored shade by employing different acids, hatching lines of varying thickness, bitten to different depths, to achieve widely varying tones of black. He also, especially in his later works, experimented with supports, using both European and Oriental papers, oatmeal paper and vellum, to create further gradations in texture and contrast. 

In the more personal medium of drawing, with extraordinary assurance and increasing economy, Rembrandt added washes to his repertoire, enriching his range of tonal as well as linear possibilities for depicting light and shadow.

Rembrandt: Lightening the Darkness will show how physical and metaphorical light and darkness meet and combine in Rembrandt’s work in all media, to produce narratives that communicate to the viewer across time. 

This exhibition is curated by Dr Francesca Vanke, Keeper of Fine Art and Curator of Decorative Art and Dr Giorgia Bottinelli, Curator of Historic Art, Norfolk Museums Service.