130 Works by Rembrandt Going on Tour in ’91

Rembrandt will get his first one-man international show next year, when 130 of the 17th-Century Dutch Master’s works will tour Berlin, Amsterdam and London, organizers said today.

Although Rembrandt’s paintings have been on tour before, the September-May show will be the first touring exhibition devoted exclusively to the greatest artist of the Netherlands’ Golden Age, organizers said.

“As far as I know there has never been a traveling exhibition on Rembrandt before,” said Uwe Wieczorek of Berlin’s Gemaeldegalerie, which is putting together the tour with Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and London’s National Gallery.

The Rijksmuseum held the largest previous exhibition of Rembrandt’s works in 1969, with about 20 works on display.

The announcement of next year’s tour comes on the heels of a major exhibit of the works of the 19th-Century Dutch Impressionist, Vincent van Gogh.

The four-month Van Gogh exhibit, which ended Sunday, drew more than 1.2 million visitors to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in the eastern Dutch city of Otterlo.

Wieczorek said the plan of the exhibition is to “show paintings once attributed to Rembrandt that are now being attributed to his pupils and compare them to paintings which we are absolutely sure were Rembrandt’s.”

He added that the Rembrandt exhibition will mark the end of two decades of research into the master’s works by art experts.

That research is expected to show that half of the existing 400 paintings thought to be done by Rembrandt were actually painted by others, Wieczorek said.

The exposition will display 50 paintings, 40 drawings and 40 etchings by Rembrandt and 45 or so works by his pupils.

Among the paintings to be displayed are “Woman Bathing,” “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem” and “Mennonite Preacher Anslo and His Wife.”

Rembrandt, who lived from 1606 to 1669, is considered the greatest of the Dutch Old Masters, who flourished in the 17th Century.