Looking for Rembrandt episode 3: Desperate for money, Rembrandt takes on commissions that even his pupils have passed by, pupils who are now getting the grand offers that once came through Rembrandt’s door.     Bankruptcy proceedings hound him for years and, although Rembrandt tries various – sometimes fraudulent – ways to divert some money back into his own pocket, his creditors take his house, his copperplates and virtually all his possessions. Yet he paints a self-portrait as the prince of painters, a regal pose that belies his financial and reputational chaos. As Rembrandt ages and enters the twilight of […]

Looking for Rembrandt episode 2: As Rembrandt paints his most iconic work, The Night Watch, his wife Saskia lies dying. Her death begins a ten-year decline in Rembrandt’s output as he pours himself into etching instead. Many etchings are erotically charged, perhaps a result of an affair he has begun with his infant son’s nursemaid.     However, that relationship ends with her being committed to a house of correction – a punishment Rembrandt himself apparently played a role in. These moral and sexual ambiguities bleed into other works. Although he finds new love and happiness with a new housemaid,

Looking for Rembrandt episode 1 : Rembrandt’s art is much loved and admired, but his remarkable life is less well-known. 350 years after his death, his surprising story told from an unusual perspective – his own.     Rembrandt arrives in Amsterdam ‘like a thunderclap’ and his star rises as he is courted by the city’s wealthy elite. But he has grander plans to be a great history painter. His meticulous attention to emotion means he takes far too long to complete important commissions, bringing him into conflict with Amsterdam’s most powerful patrons. He falls in love with and marries