The Oil Painter's Bible - chapter 6
examples of his work show that he was
not limited to any one of them, but
employed them all, the choice depending
on which approach best suited the subject
in question, and for what purpose the
painting was intended. His facility with
all three soon led him to combine aspects
of one with another, and to add
innovations of his own.
Some of his paintings are on wood,
executed in what appears to be essentially
the Flemish Technique; some small
studies on wood panels were done in a
variation of the Direct Painting
Technique, and some on canvas in both
the Venetian and Direct techniques. The
primer for the panels is white, the first
coat consisting of glue chalk gesso, which
was sanded to smooth out the
irregularities of the panel’s surface, then a
layer of white lead in linseed oil,
sometimes tinted with black, Raw Umber,
and sometimes an earth red, covered with
a transparent brown imprimatura, which
creates the golden glow characteristic of
his work. His canvases are primed with an
underlayer of a red earth, perhaps to fill
the texture of the canvas, then overlaid
with a light, warm grey made from
lootwit (lead white with chalk, ground in
linseed oil) and Raw Umber, sometimes
with a little black and/or earth red, or
sometimes with white lead alone.
Rembrandt was an extremely versatile artist, and did not likely follow an unthinking repetition of the
same procedure every time. Undoubtedly he thought his way through each painting, from the genesis of
the idea to the last brushstroke, never lapsing into a routine approach. From unfinished pictures we know
that, at least sometimes, he began in transparent browns, working in monochrome to establish the design
of the picture, attending to the masses of dark and light, often using opaque white for the strongest lights
in this stage, sometimes referred to as the imprimatura, or later, by the French academic painters, as a
frottée, though the term, “frottée” generally referred to a thin brown scrub-in without white, the lights
instead being simply indicated by leaving the light ground more or less exposed. This stage was
apparently allowed to dry before proceeding further, though there may well have been exceptions. Over
the dried brown underpainting color was begun, with Rembrandt working from back to front rather than
working over the whole picture at once. He exploited to the fullest the qualities of transparence and
opacity, relying on the underglow of light coming through transparent color for many special effects, with
opaque lights built up more heavily for the brightly lit areas, their colors sometimes modified by subtle
glazes, semiglazes or scumbles, and the arrangement of transparent darks and opaque lights to play
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