REMBRANDTS IN SEPARATE PORTRAITS : TV REUNITES 17TH-CENTURY COUPLE

Art historical lore is loaded with sad separations: The Elgin marbles have long since split from the Parthenon, leaving the Athenian Acroplis for the British Museum; the three parts of Paolo Uccello’s Renaissance masterpiece, “Battle of San Romano,” are estranged in museums in Florence, London and Paris, and many a royal family has been scattered in individual portraits.

With precedents like these, who’d have expected a happier fate for Rembrandt’s 1634 paintings of a Rotterdam brewer and his wife? Armand Hammer, that’s who, and when the industrialist/art collector gets an idea, he’s inclined to turn it into reality.

No matter that the husband, Dirck Jansz. Pesser, belongs to the County Museum of Art (through a gift of Hammer) or that his wife, Haesje Cleyburg, hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The 17th-Century Dutch couple will get together electronically Sunday afternoon when the two portraits are discussed during a Dutch television program planned in celebration of the Rijksmuseum’s 100th birthday.

(The program will not appear in the United States.)

Dirck Jansz. Pesser’s traveling commitments--as part of roving exhibitions of Hammer’s collection--prevented a physical reunion and a labor strike threatened to sabotage the electronic one. But after much hand wringing, transatlantic telephoning and schedule changing, preparations for the show went on this week, both in Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

The television program was to have been a live broadcast on Wednesday evening, combining a 30-minute segment transmitted by satellite from Los Angeles with a two-hour live show from the Rijksmuseum. When a long-threatened television workers strike was called to begin at 6 a.m. Wednesday, Netherlands Broadcasting Co. and Rijksmuseum personnel stepped up their plans and worked straight through Tuesday night to tape their part of the program.

Here at the County Museum of Art, the anticipated live broadcast on Wednesday was converted to a session of taped interviews, transmitted by satellite to Paris and carried by truck to Amsterdam for editing. Airing of the program had to be delayed from Wednesday to Sunday.

The strike was timed to upset what was sure to be “a very well watched program,” according to Pieter Meyers, a Dutch scientist and art conservator recently named head of the County Museum of Art’s conservation center and scheduled to be interviewed for the program. “My mother is absolutely furious,” he said. “I think she had told half the population of the country that I was going to be on live television.” He’ll still appear, but at a delayed time and without the gala festivities that would have figured in the live Dutch segment.

Undaunted by all these changes, Hammer and others involved in L.A. segment taped the event in the Ahmanson Gallery’s atrium. Backed by banks of potted pink tulips, Dutch entertainer Bram Vermeulen stood by the portrait and interviewed Hammer, Meyers and Scott Schaefer, the museum’s curator of European painting and sculpture.

Asked to name his favorite work in his collection, Hammer cited Rembrandt’s “Juno,” then cited the portrait on the easel beside him as next in his affections. “I’m so happy that we found his wife. We didn’t even know he was married,” he said. “I hope sometime we can bring the two of them together in an exhibition.”

Hammer gave the County Museum of Art $2 million in 1969 to buy the portrait, then known as “Man From the Raman Family.” He knew nothing of the companion portrait until the queen of the Netherlands recently lent the Rijksmuseum 10 million gilders (about $3 million) to buy Haesje Cleyburg from a New York dealer. Dutch art historians uncovered the connection between the two as well as the identity of the man previously known by the name of the family that had once owned the painting.

Hearing of the Netherlands’ campaign to raise money by public subscription to repay the royal loan and learning that the drive coincided with the Rijksmuseum’s centennial celebrations, Hammer decided to reunite the couple, if only on television. He paid $25,000 to make it happen.

During an interview after the taping session, Hammer told The Times, “I think Rembrandt would be very surprised to know how far his portrait has traveled--to China, Norway, Scotland, France, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela.”

Asked about the brewer’s wife, he said she was a homebody, resting in English collections for most of this century. “We’ve never heard of her traveling at all, but we’d like to reunite her with her wandering husband.”