Ernst van de Wetering (9 March 1938 – 11 August 2021^[1])^[2] was a Dutch art historian^[3] and an expert on Rembrandt and his work.

Background

Ernst van de Wetering was born in Hengelo. He was first trained as an artist at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. He received his doctorate in art history from the University of Amsterdam in 1986. Between 1964 and 1968, he worked as a scientific illustrator of microscopic preparations at the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam. From 1968, he was a member and later became chairman of the Rembrandt Research Project. He was art historian on the staff of Amsterdam's Central Research Laboratory for Restoration from 1969 to 1987 and, from 1987, was full professor of history of art at the University of Amsterdam. He published extensively on historic painting techniques, as well as in the field of theory and ethics of conservation and restoration.

In 1990, he succeeded Josua Bruyn as chair of the Rembrandt Research Project, the team of scholars that is charged with tracking down Rembrandt's works, authenticating them and, when needed, conserving the paintings. As of 2015, the project had published six volumes on Rembrandt's work, the known Rembrandts, and the techniques used by the painter.^[4]

Van de Wetering was from his time at the Hague Academy active as a practicing artist. He made primarily portraits and landscape paintings.

Assessment of Rembrandt

In most of his writing and lectures, van de Wetering portrays Rembrandt as a painter who struggled to create as many marketable paintings as possible, and whose studio turned out a large number of paintings with varying amounts of work by Rembrandt and his apprentices. Van de Wetering was also able to discover a number of Rembrandt's works which had been repainted by the artist to make them more commercially acceptable.

In 2006, in celebration of Rembrandt's 400th birthday, van de Wetering was quoted by the Associated Press saying: "My hope for the Rembrandt year would be that somehow we would become free of images, that we look with fresh eyes. So much research has been done, and so little of this research has come to the knowledge of the general public."^[5]

Studies of artists' use of light

Van de Wetering was the voice of dissent when it came to the significance of light in Dutch 17th-century painting. He doubted that it was a factor at all and said there were as many kinds of light as there were ways of painting. It was not a question of light, he added, but of a painter's methods and style. He also wrote several academic papers debunking the myth that Claude Monet painted only with natural light.^[6]

Awards

In 2003, van de Wetering was presented with the College Art Association/American Institute for Conservation Joint Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation at Oxford University, where he has been a frequent guest lecturer.^[7] He was Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and recipient of the Silver Museum Medal of the City of Amsterdam.^[8]

He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford for 2002–03.^[9]

A Festschrift in his honor was published in 2005: Marieke van den Doel, Natasja van Eck, Gerbrand Korevaar, Anna Tummers, Thijs Weststeijn (editors): The Learned Eye—Regarding Art, Theory, and the Artist's Reputation: Essays for Ernst van de Wetering. Amsterdam University Press, 2005, ISBN 90-5356-713-5.

Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue Affair

Ernst van de Wetering was one of the critics of the restoration of the painting Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III. This painting by Barnett Newman was attacked with a knife by Gerard Jan van Bladeren in 1986 and restored by Daniel Goldreyer in 1991. This led to a legal proceeding, which was concluded by a settlement. Van de Wetering was no longer allowed to publicly criticise the painting. However, he was still allowed to discussing the matter within the scientific community.^[10] In 2013, the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant revealded, based on a report of the Judicial Laboratory of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, that Goldreyer's restoration has probably "forever destroyed" Newman's work.^[11]

Selected publications

• "Studies in the Workshop Practice of the Early Rembrandt." PhD dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1986.^[12]
• Rembrandt zelf, W. Books, 1999, ISBN 978-90-400-9314-2.
• Rembrandt: The Painter at Work. Amsterdam University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-90-8964-033-8.
• Ernst van de Wetering, P. van Schaik, B. de Lange. Rembrandt in nieuw licht. Local World, 2009. ISBN 978-90-811681-7-5.
• A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, RRP, Springer, 1982–2014: parts 1, 2, and 3 (edited, with J. Bruyn, B. Haak, S.H. Levie, P.J.J. van Thiel); parts 4, 5, and 6 (author).
• "Rembrandt's Beginnings—An Essay." Kassel and Amsterdam, 2001–2002, pages 22–57.
• Rembrandt, A Life in 180 Paintings. Local World, 2008. ISBN 978-90-811681-2-0
• Rembrandt. The Painter Thinking. Amsterdam University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-90-8964-561-6.
• Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited, A Complete Survey, Springer, 2017. ISBN 978-94-024-1027-3.