Rembrandt in Birmingham

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition of prints on loan from the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam  – 58 of them in total, nearly all etchings. I was there yesterday, and would urge anyone with an interest in Rembrandt and in etching to visit if you can. There are portraits and self-portraits, landscapes, biblical subjects, genre scenes, studies and sketches, and there are even a few of the original copper plates – also, helpfully, a video explanation of the technique of etching and a display of etching tools and materials. Each of the prints, from the tiniest sketches to the larger, more finished works, is worth a close look, and the museum helpfully provides magnifying glasses so that even the most delicate lines and marks can be examined. The skill with which they are made, and the punch the best of them pack, seem almost miraculous. Looking intently at these works was both richly satisfying and  borderline exhausting, but it left me more convinced than ever that Rembrandt is either the greatest artist there ever was, or the equal of any other contender for that title. This touring exhibition is on until June 1st, and is going nowhere else in the the UK, so catch it if you can.   

As well as the Rembrandts – supplemented by a few of his etchings from the museum's own collection – there is a small display of prints by two West Midlands artists: Raymond Cowern (1913-86), a fine etcher, painter and illustrator, and Harry Eccleston (1923-2010), whose engraving skills were such that he became the Bank of England's first in-house artist-designer, creating the first pictorial British bank-notes (Newton, Wellington, Shakespeare, Wren and Florence Nightingale). Both men were products of Birmingham School of Art.