From Rembrandt’s Studio: The Prints of Ferdinand Bol

From Rembrandt’s Studio: The Prints of Ferdinand Bol focuses on printmaking in Rembrandt’s Holland and documents the efforts of the Dutch painter and printmaker Ferdinand Bol to arrive at his own style while working with Rembrandt, the greatest artist of his time. The exhibit is part of a joint effort with the J. Paul Getty Museum, among other museums in Southern California, to examine Rembrandt’s influence and work.

The exhibition brings together works from the permanent collection at The San Diego Museum of Art, a major group of loans from the collection of George C. Kenney II and Olga Kitsakos-Kenney, and loans from other California collections. Together, these constitute one of the world’s most complete sets of Bol’s etchings.

Impressions of nearly all of Bol’s etchings are juxtaposed in the exhibition with examples of Rembrandt’s own graphic work of similar subjects. This exhibition is one of the first dedicated to Bol, the important but relatively little-known artist who worked alongside Rembrandt from the mid-1630s to 1642.

Even after setting up a practice of his own, Bol remained one of Rembrandt’s most devoted and talented followers, and many of Bol’s works have long been mistaken for those of Rembrandt himself. Because of the unique interplay between student and mentor, Museum visitors will gain not only with an appreciation for Bol, but also a clearer sense of ‘what makes a Rembrandt print a Rembrandt.
The San Diego Museum of Art’s exhibition is timed to coincide with Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, a major exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles through February 28, 2010. The exhibition, focusing on the artistic relationships between Rembrandt and his followers, also provides the opportunity to study drawings by Rembrandt and Bol side-by-side.

Within San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art joins forces with the Timken Museum of Art to present a strong combined showing of Rembrandt and Bol in Balboa Park. The Timken’s simultaneous exhibit is Rembrandt's Recession: Passion and Prints in the Dutch Golden Age Other related exhibitions on Rembrandt and his circle are at  the Getty Center and the Hammer Museum, both in Los Angeles and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.