THE REMBRANDT GEERTJE AND HENDREICJE SHOW

The Rembrandt Geertje and Hendreicje Show. Art-lovers, and the simply curious, had the opportunity to see as his creation [link]in the July 2020 Monegasque Government’s Fine-Arts Biennale.
THE REMBRANDT GEERTJE AND HENDREICJE SHOWThe interesting background of Rembrandt’s disorganised family life. jumping the centuries from the Netherlands,’s golden age to the usa postwar artists war of the sexes.
Geertje Dircx, a widow, entered Rembrandt’s studio in 1642 shortly after the death of his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh’s; She combined the activity of nursemaid to Titus, his only child, with increasing companionship with the artist. Their harmony came under strain when, in 1647, Hendrickje Stoffels arrived, ostensibly as Rembrandt’s housekeeper, but losing no time in replacing Hendrickje in his affections. increasing companionship with the artist. Their harmony came under strain when, in 1647, Hendrickje Stoffels arrived, ostensibly as Rembrandt’s housekeeper, but losing no time in replacing Hendrickje in his affections.

The distressed Geertje, determined to make Rembrandt’s life a misery from then on. Her declaration of war, unfortunately for Rembrandt, coincided with a decline in his business activities. His thick impasto-like painting style characteristic of his œuvre at the time was simultaneous falling out of fashion thus ensuring a decline in their market value. Succeeding wars with France and England abetted by a Netherlands economic downturns was likewise hurting his contemporaries, sometimes disastrously, Jan Vermeer of Delft, joined Rembrandt in experiencing similar difficult financial circumstances.

A decade of wars, epidemics and economic crisis, fortuitously abetted Geertje’s project. She summoned Rembrandt before the Commissioners of Marital Affairs on a charge of breach of promise. The Calvinist courts in 1649 disapproval of Geertje Dirck, a widows, stressed her lack of piety, moderation, and living ‘in sin. Her unstable comportment, hysterics, personal economic instability, (and the depression of the Dutch (and corresponding Rembrandt’s financial instability) caused by the Eighty Years’wars of Dutch independence pushed her over the edge, mentally.  Adding insult to injury, and Justifying his Saskia’s impatience with him, under the terms of his late wife’s will Rembrandt could not get access to her wealth at a moment he most needed it. Saskia van Uylenburgh’s cautious structure of her testamentary trust in threatening him from beyond the grave indicated her awareness of the artist’s incompetent, difficult and disorganized character.
The artist responded by revealing his attitude to women as a person, nasty, bossy and angry by having the courts lock Geertje up in a workhouse albeit at his own personal expense. She was release five years later and, with one irritation after another, continue to make his life hell. By then their nearest friends and neighbors recognized that the unhappy woman was displaying increased mental disturbance that continued until she died, five years later. Her estate was, technically, accepted as a creditor and probably was an important force in hastening Rembrandt’s 1656 technical bankruptcy. Ultimately, the maltreated, unhappy Geertje Dircx’s life was a successful greeting to put-upon women, notably painters, Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman and Berthe Morisot

The Rembrandt Geertje and Hendreicje Show, painting’s subject-matter owes its inspiration partly to this classical, James Thurber New Yorker Magazine cartoon, above, published 1943, where the host introduces his current trophy wife to his guests.
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The technical quality displayed during the July 2020 Monegasque Government’s Fine-Arts Biennale version of the work of art is attractive and emphasises the quality and the details of the watercolours the artist used. The blue pigment renders particularly well. Mostly, it is Cobalt blue: however, because of its delicate effect blue achieves adopted in the the cartoon, made extensive use of the semi-precious Lapis Lazuli. It is a rare and expensive blue pigment, the best quality of which comes from Afganistan. https://www.visitmonaco.com/it/evento/esposizione/27041/5-forum-degli-artisti-di-monaco-online

The Florentine art historian Fillipo Baldinucci, Rembrandt’s contemporary and may have visited the artist’s Amsterdam studio or heard news of him from local  contemporary sources. In his writings he confirms that, going back at least fifteen hundred years, it was then still the practice for commissioning patrons to supply the artist directly this Lapis Lazuli and with another being, pure gold in its many forms such as leaf and in water colour form for embelleshing painted panels and manuscripts.

Compare with Artemisia Gentileschi, Agostino Tassi, 1612 rape trial.
Sources (Bibliography) – Crenshaw, Paul , Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: Cambridge University Press, 2006