Rembrandt & van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion

It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola.

But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion, one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show with quite a lot of unfamiliar Rembrandt works (as well as some old favourites).

Not long after completing his apprenticeship with Rembrandt in Amsterdam, the hugely talented van Hoogstraten travelled to Vienna, where, in the early 1650s, he impressed the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand III enormously with his ability to create images that were so convincing that they could fool even an Emperor.  

Such as the Old Man at a Window. 

This painting, the palace inventory suggests, would have been displayed without a frame, in a recess in a wall, where van Hoogstraten's impeccably detailed rendering of the stone window opening, with all its imperfections, of the wooden frame and of the bottle-bottom window panes would have blended in with its surroundings (in what, one must suppose, would often have been a not very brightly lit environment). Note the small glass phial on the windowsill, as well as a feather and what looks like a tiny bit of twig or leaf. And then there's the old man who's sticking his head out through the window to look at us, with his wispy beard, his wrinkled and reddened face, his watery eyes and his fur hat. With this image, van Hoogstraten is declaring his ability to paint any surface, any texture, and to persuade you that fiction is fact. 

The idea of a painting showing a person apparently breaking through into the viewer's space beyond the picture will have come from Rembrandt, who in 1641, before he'd even taken van Hoogstraten on as a pupil, was creating pictures doing just that. There's this one, not a Rembrandt we can recall seeing before, from the Royal Castle in Warsaw: 

The girl is posing behind a picture frame -- but not the actual frame, a painted one within the real frame -- and her hands, which are notably three-dimensional and very detailed, cast shadows and create reflections on the painted frame she is resting them on.

And consider also the 1641 portrait of Rembrandt's neighbour Agatha Bas. She grips the painted frame on the side of the painting with her left hand, her thumb protruding into our space. 

And then you see the fan, extending out over the bottom of the painted frame, very much in our space, with the sense of three-dimensionality increased by the curling of her lace cuff. 

But let's leave the master for a bit and get back to the pupil, van Hoogstraten, a man who was very proud of his ability to cause, as he put it, "things to appear which are not". The Emperor was so taken by the verisimilitude of van Hoogstraten's creations that he awarded him a medal for his skills, something that van Hoogstraten used constantly to promote himself. 

He would depict the medal in paintings such as an image of a letter rack now in the collection of the museum in his home town of Dordrecht, dangling to the left of a comb, scissors, penknife and of course a lot of correspondence, tucked artfully in and among red leather straps. Any material, he was saying, I can do it. And I've won an award.... 

There's a medal, or something similar, peeking out from behind the towel in this one, with a mirror behind the brush; it's a cupboard door, painted to be inserted in a cupboard space, not to be framed in a gallery, but to catch the viewer unawares.  

In another letter-rack painting, this one from Karlsruhe, there are no fewer than 21 different objects competing for your attention, with most notably (behind the medal) a large comb whose teeth are artfully arranged, some behind a red leather strap, some in front; so artfully, it has to be said, that it's too good to be true. And of course, it isn't....

Now, there's nothing quite as characteristic of Dutch Golden Age art as a domestic genre scene; those neatly swept interiors with their patterned floor tiles, perhaps some characteristic Delft tiles as a skirting board, and maybe looking through the entrance (what the Dutch call a doorkijkje) into another room, where a maid or a housewife is engaged in some wholesome activity, or perhaps where some assignation is taking place. Oh, I can do that too, van Hootgstraten said.

Only his idea of a genre scene was just a little bit subversive. Where's the maid? There's nobody to be seen. The broom's left by the second of the three open doorways; the keys are hanging in the third door, where a pair of slippers lie abandoned. The candle in the candlestick's at a bit of an angle, too. And on the back wall, there's part of a painting that looks very like Gerard ter Borch's Gallant Conversation, with the girl in a shimmering satin dress (and a bit of an enigmatic picture today, though perhaps not at the time.... or who knows?).

And then, on a bigger scale.... Van Hoogstraten began to make more monumental perspective scenes during time he spent in England (he was much travelled, unlike Rembrandt who never left the Netherlands). Looked at from the right angle, such a view is extremely convincing, though it has to be said that the effect in a small reproduction doesn't do it justice. 

And as you go through into the second half of this exhibition, there's a surprise; you see a door apparently opening before you to reveal a video View Through a House, with a dog seemingly waiting for you on the threshold. Clearly, the challenge of moving the actual canvas -- more than 2.6 metres high -- from the National Trust's Dyrham Park in Goucestershire to Vienna was perhaps a bit too complicated to undertake. 

This second half of the show takes a look at history painting (not one of Samuel's fortes, we feel; even he couldn't do everything) as well as concentrating on the minutiae of how both painters created their work. The highlights are perhaps, as so often, the selection of those self-portraits Rembrandt created on such a regular basis, those increasingly weary, aged and troubled faces that he would possibly have posted on his Instagram account today. One of the most intimate is his Small Self-Portrait from about 1657 (he was only about 50). The curators take a detailed look at the brushwork he deployed, highlighting how he even used his bare fingers to get the effect he wanted.

No excuse, then, not to end with one of Rembrandt's most famous selfies, from just a few years before his death. 

What do the circles mean? Rembrandt as the universal artist? Hard to argue with that. Van Hoogstraten, though: He was the master of illusion, and he had the medal to prove it. 

Practicalities

Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion continues at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna until January 12. The exhibition is open daily from 1000 to 1800, and until 2100 on Thursdays and Saturdays. You'll need to book a ticket for a specific timeslot here; full-price admission, including the rest of the museum, costs 25 euros. We spent a good 2 1/2 hours in this exhibition; there is quite a lot to see (but also plenty of seating to take a short break or admire the paintings from not quite so close up). 

The KHM is just off the Ringstrasse boulevard that encircles Vienna's city centre, not far from the Hofburg palace or the opera house. Volkstheater is the nearest Underground station, and numerous trams run nearby.

A large part, if not all, of the van Hoogstraten section of this exhibition will be on show at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam from February 1 to May 4 under the title of The Illusionist.

While you're in the Kunsthistorisches Museum

There's Van Eyck, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Vermeer and Vigée Le Brun, and that's only the Vs. But if you're going to see just one room in this enormous collection after (or before) the exhibition, make it the one with the wonderful array of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, most memorably the Hunters in the Snow. You may need some sustenance to keep you going, and provided the queue to get a table is not too long, there can surely be no more splendid museum café anywhere than the one under the KHM's cupola, even if the selfie-snappers lower the tone.

Images

Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), Old Man at a Window, 1653, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery. © KHM-Museumsverband
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669), Girl in a Picture Frame, 1641, The Royal Castle in Warsaw. © The Royal Castle in Warsaw -- Museum; Photo: Andrzej Ring, Lech Sandzewicz
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Agatha Bas, 1641, The Royal Collection, London. © His Majesty King Charles III 2024
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Trompe l'oeil Still Life, 1655, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Samuel van Hoogstraten, The Slippers, 1650/75, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Michel Urtado
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Perspective View with a Young Man Reading in a Renaissance Palace, 1662/67, Dordrechts Museum. Photo: Bob Strik
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Two Circles, c. 1665, English Heritage (Kenwood, London). © English Heritage