Rembrandt is perhaps best known for his famous paintings such as The Night Watch and Bathsheba at her Bath but alongside these epic oils, the Dutch master also produced hundreds of prints.

This exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery brings together 44 of his etchings from the collections at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam alongside Rembrandt prints from BMAG’s own collection and prints from later artists inspired by his ink work.

And it makes for a wonderful insight into the expertise of one of the art world’s great masters. From pictures featuring grand religious scenes such as The Return of the Prodigal Son and The Entombment of Christ through to portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and more small scale studies of an animal or shell, you can’t help but feel there was nothing Rembrandt couldn’t recreate on paper.

What comes across is a man fascinated by everything and determined to give life and landscape a reality through ink on paper, offering us new ways to view them.

Rembrandt caught and recreated the characters he saw around him like the 17 th century pest controller selling rat poison at the doorstep, a group of beggars asking for alms or a miller who hefts a sack of grain as he climbs a ladder. These were ordinary people going around their ordinary lives, now caught in those moments for centuries.

Rembrandt’s prints are a combination of intricate detail and impressionistic outline which come together to create a harmonious image. So, for example in his View of Haarlem and Bloemendaal, some of the buildings are intricately drawn and yet some of the characters in the fields are created by just a handful of lines so that if you look at them closely they almost disintegrate into the landscape.

It is interesting to read in one of the notes alongside the artworks that Rembrandt believed there was no need to recreate every element in detail for a picture to be complete, stating “the work is finished when the artist has achieved his objective in it.”

Rembrandt was hugely adept with the power of illumination and shadow and, just as in his paintings, we can see in his etchings how he uses these tools to create the focal point. So, in The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds the eye is drawn up to the heavenly light but also down to the shepherds as they are bathed in this angelic reflection. Or in Faust (The Practicing Alchemist) the figure of the man and his studies are lit from the window while the remainder of the room is in darkness.

Exhibitions can often be frustrating as they are so overcrowded so this BMAG exhibition is a huge relief, as certainly when we visited first thing on a Thursday morning, it was pretty quiet. Not only does this mean you can follow the route created by the curators and see the development of Rembrandt’s skill and  experience, but you also have time to spend in front of individual pictures really taking them in rather than being hurried onto the next one by a waiting queue.

The information for each picture is just enough, explaining the subject matter and its relevance within Rembrandt’s progression as an artist. And a really nice addition is that you can borrow a mini magnifying glass enabling you to enlarge and examine some of the details, which is well worth doing.

It is also possible to learn more about the etching process as, alongside a few of the prints, the exhibition features the copper plates Rembrandt used to create them. This is further explained in a short and very easy-to-follow film demonstrating the technique.

Rembrandt’s enduring influence is explored with a series of prints from later artists including Whistler and Picasso. Plus, to bring the relevance back to Birmingham, there is a room featuring prints by two Midlands artists Harry Eccleston and Raymond Cowern who turned their talents to etchings of gardens or industry.

Co-organised by the American Federation of Arts and the Rembrandt House Museum, Rembrandt: Masterpieces in Black and White is the first time the artist’s prints have been brought out of the Netherlands as a collection and Birmingham is the only opportunity to see the exhibition in the UK.

The collection provides a valuable introduction to Rembrandt for people new to his work but also offers those more familiar with his art an opportunity to see a concentration of his prints in one place and the time to study them in a bit more depth. It is a real coup for BMAG to be able to bring these wonderful examples of one of the world’s greatest artists to our doorstep.

Five stars

Reviewed by Diane Parkes. Rembrandt: Masterpieces in Black and White is on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 1 June 2025, for more information and tickets see birminghammuseums.org.uk