Rembrandt’s Return: A Complement of Prints opens at the Allentown Art Museum on November 19, 2021, as the counterpoint to the Museum’s spring 2021 Rembrandt Revealed exhibition, which celebrated the reattribution of the AAM’s painting Portrait of a Young Woman (1632) to the seventeenth-century Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn. That show explored in detail the portrait’s history, provenance, and conservation. This new exhibition opens upon the painting’s return from loan to an important exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada entitled Rembrandt in Amsterdam. Through a selection of Rembrandt’s etchings from throughout his lifetime, Rembrandt’s Return: A Complement of Prints places Portrait of a Young Woman within the larger framework of the artist’s subject matter while celebrating the unique impact of his work in print.

The exhibition opens to members only on Friday, November 19, from 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. and then to everyone from 1 till 4 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m.-4 p.m. The exhibit continues on view through March 27, 2022. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and Third Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

For Rembrandt, printmaking was equal in importance to painting and drawing, an independent creative process rather than a reproductive one. He worked his plates by hand, uncovering the potential of traditional techniques such as etching, engraving, and drypoint, and experimenting with the possibilities of etched tone, selective wiping of the ink, and printing on different surfaces.

This exhibition features six prints from the Allentown Art Museum’s collection and additional prints from other area collections, including the Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College, the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, and the Bryn Mawr College Art and Artifact Collection. The AAM’s prints were acquired through the Rodale Print Fund, the SOTA Print Fund, and as a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Fowler Merle Smith.

Learn more about the exhibition here: Rembrandt’s Return: A Complement of Prints – Allentown Art Museum