Fionn Wilson

I remember painting this not long after seeing the Rembrandt: The Late Works exhibition at the National Gallery. I wrote this at the time:

“His self portraits are exquisite. I mean, they are heartbreakingly exquisite. His paintings are alive but not in that hyper-real way. It’s like they breathe and vibrate. He uses impasto a lot on the face, where paint is densely applied. I noticed that hands, particularly, fade into abstraction. His palette is predominantly whites, yellows, blacks, browns and greys. And the light seems to come from within. They’re like miracles.

How I felt when I first saw his self portraits is similar in terms of how I felt when I first saw Rothko’s colour field paintings. Similar in terms of the power of it, but Rothko made me want to cry – Rembrandt made me awe struck and joyful. And aware of the mysterious, which in a way Rothko did, but with Rembrandt it’s more THERE. Like if Rothko was water, Rembrandt is earth.”

I’m not drawing any parallels between Rembrandt’s self portraits and this one below. It’s just to say I can remember vividly the effect of the exhibition, which hasn’t left me. The collective power of his paintings of the human soul within the body.

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