GALERIE H.H RUMBLER

Kunsthandlung Helmut H. Rumbler was founded by Helmut and Petra Rumbler in Frankfurt in 1971. From the beginning the gallery was focusing on Old Master Prints of exceptional museum quality from the 15th to the 19th century.

Since 2016, when Helmut Rumbler passed away, the gallery is led by Petra Rumbler together with Dr. Michael Weis. The gallery continues its tradition of annually publishing richly illustrated and well researched catalogues. For decades Kunsthandlung Helmut H Rumbler has been exhibiting at TEFAF Maastricht each spring as well as the International Fine Art Print Fair New York in the fall.

Provenance

• Earl of Aylesford (Lugt 58)
• Ernst Oppermann (Lugt 887)
• Amsler & Ruthardt,
• Berlin auction XXIV, 1882, no. 1749
• Private collection, Hessen

One of Rembrandt’s first etched nudes “naar het leven” (from life), presumably dating from the year when he relocated from Leiden to Amsterdam, a composition free of any mythological trimmings.

Excellent impression which does full justice to the play of light captured by this composition, observed in such detail and rendered in a highly nuanced, subtle graphic texture.

Still with the artist’s monogram in the background left, etched with extreme delicacy and missing entirely from later impressions. Flawlessly fresh and pristine.

With its unsparing realism, this work was highly regarded by Rembrandt’s contemporaries, and was copied by W. Hollar as early as 1635 (New Hollstein 143). After Rembrandt’s death, with a perspective shaped by the then prevalent academically oriented classicism, A. Pels commented in his Gebruik en musbruik des tooneels of 1681: *When Rembrandt… depicted a nude woman, he chose as his model not a Venus, and instead a washerwoman or peat treader from a barn, referring to his bizarrerie as an “imitation of nature”; for him, everything else was vain ornament…*Despite its classicizing prejudice, this harsh verdict clearly (albeit in negative terms) articulates the intrinsic qualities of Rembrandt’s depiction of a woman who has discarded her clothing. With unerring realism, but also great sensuous appeal, he renders the exposed female form, along with the varied texture of the skin, by means of a subtle play of light and shadow.