Abstract:
This thesis is the first work to fully examine New Zealand’s entire collections of prints by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). As of 2019, four major New Zealand galleries – the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa – possess 118 impressions identified as authentic Rembrandt prints, all acquired from 1869-2004. Despite being one of the most significant and prolific seventeenth-century printmakers, New Zealand’s collections of Rembrandt prints have been largely ignored by academics and curators until the past 20 years. What few works discuss them, however, have only considered individual collections or specific donors. With so many unexplored facets of their history and limited provenance information, this thesis crafts an historical framework for the nation’s collections of Rembrandt prints, linking them to their creator, printers, and donors. Establishing the historical Rembrandt, this thesis outlines how the artist made and sold his prints, before shifting to discuss how Rembrandt’s plates were restruck, reworked and copied by later generations of artists. In addition to engaging with a wide range of authoritative secondary sources on Rembrandt, this thesis adds new insight by reconsidering how Rembrandt used visual references in his printmaking. Additionally, it re-examines how his dual role as a businessman and artist affected his print-selling, and questions how galleries around the world currently attribute Rembrandt prints. This thesis concludes by documenting and profiling the known donors of all of New Zealand’s collections, never before compiled in one work. Adding a critical component, I evaluate their relationship with Rembrandt’s printed oeuvre, questioning how well they represent the various facets of his printmaking. This thesis is also supplemented by a catalogue featuring entries for all of the Rembrandt prints in the Auckland Art Gallery, the Christchurch Art Gallery, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Te Papa.
