"This book owes its genesis to a series of conferences held in 2009, 2011, and 2013 at Queen's University's Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, UK." (Acknowledgements).

Throughout his life, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was considered an exceptional artist by contemporary art lovers. In this highly original book, Ernst van de Wetering investigates why Rembrandt, from a very early age, was praised by high-placed connoisseurs like Constantijn Huygens. It turns out that Rembrandt, from his first endeavours in painting on, had embarked on a journey past all the 'foundations of the art of painting' which were considered essential in the seventeenth century. In his systematic exploration of these foundations, Rembrandt achieved mastery in all of them, thus becoming the 'pittore famoso' that count Cosimo the Medici visited at the end of his life. Rembrandt never stopped searching for ever better solutions to the pictorial problems he saw himself confronted with; this sometimes led to radical decisions and alterations in his way of working, which cannot simply be explained by attributing them to a 'change in style' or a 'natural development'. In a quest as rigorous and novel as Rembrandt's, Van de Wetering shows us how Rembrandt dealt with the foundations of his art and used them to try and become the best painter the world had ever seen. His book sheds new light both on Rembrandt's exceptional accomplishments and on the practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age at large.

"Rembrandt was the most famous painter of the Dutch Golden Age, and the opportunity to work in his studio attracted young artists for nearly four decades, until the artist's death in 1669. This catalogue explores the workings of Rembrandt's studio in the form of drawings made by the master himself and fifteen of his pupils. Rembrandt and his students would often depict the same subject matter as an exercise and make drawings of the same nude models. In his later years, Rembrandt also made sketching trips outside Amsterdam to create his innovative landscapes of the Dutch countryside. His students followed this example, sometimes depicting the same sites." "Organized chronologically, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference is a groundbreaking study that presents more than forty works by Rembrandt and related works by his pupils. It explores the scholarship of recent decades that has brought new and more systematic criteria to bear on determining the authenticity of Rembrandt drawings, and defines the styles of his pupils and followers with ever-greater precision. In so doing, this volume demystifies the sometimes-baffling exercise known as connoisseurship and seeks to re-enact the daily practices that Rembrandt used to teach his students and bring them to artistic maturity." "This is an essential book for anyone interested in the Dutch Golden Age or the lives and careers of Rembrandt and the artists in his immediate circle. A major exhibition of these drawings will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from December 8, 2009, to February 28, 2010." --Book Jacket.

Rembrandts paintings have been admired throughout centuries because of their artistic freedom. But Rembrandt was also a craftsman whose painting technique was rooted the tradition. Rembrandt—The Painter at Work is the result of a lifelong search for Rembrandt's working methods, his intellectual approach to the art of painting and the way in which his studio functioned. Ernst van de Wetering demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to tackle questions about authenticity and other art-historical issues. Approximately 350 illustrations, half of which are reproduced in colour, make this book into a monumental tribute to one of the worlds most important painters. "The book is—if one may be allowed to say such a thing about a serious scholarly work—a gripping good-read.' Christopher White, The Burlington Magazine "This is a very rich book, a deeply felt analysis of an artist whom the author knows better than almost any other living scholar." Christopher Brown, Times Literary Supplement

The British Museum has one of the largest Rembrandt collections in the world. This is the exhibition catalogue.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn., Sept. 24, 2011-Jan. 8, 2012.

For Rembrandt, as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance: the strutting and mincing, the wardrobe and face-paint, the full repertoire and gesture and gimace, the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes, the belly-laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon, to shake a fist or uncover a breast; and how to sin and how to atone. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.

* The rise of the Fab Four - The Beatles in their fledgling years of fame * Incredible photos, many unseen, from the cameras of Terry O'Neill, Norman Parkinson, Michael Ward and Derek Bayes * With text by renowned Pop historian Tony Barrell * The perfect gift for any fan who keeps Beatlemania alive today The Beatles ascended like no band before, hurtling to the dizzy heights of international stardom in the early 1960s. Their counter-cultural vibes and unmistakable talent are still the subject of much discussion today - as is the rabid devotion of their fans. But how did one pop group become, as Lennon infamously quipped, "more popular than Jesus"? The work of four photographers provides an enlightening insight into the band's rise to fame. Ward captured the Fab Four when Beatlemania was still confined to their own home city - the band braved the icy Liverpool streets for a promotional shoot during the Big Freeze of '62-63. O'Neill crossed paths with The Beatles amid the buzz of the Swinging Sixties, resonating with the band in 1963 as a photographer of their generation. Parkinson delivered a deceptively relaxed shoot later that year, when the band were recording their second album; while Bayes captured never-before-published candid shots of The Beatles filming Help! in 1965. Accompanying these pictures, Tony Barrell's text delves into the Beatlemania phenomenon - the good, the bad, the ugly and the odd. From the creation of their early hit records to the hails of confectionery that peppered stages after John claimed George had eaten his jelly babies, Beatlemania: Four Photographers on the Fab Four reveals how one band became a lasting sensation.

Rembrandt van Rijn is the quintessential Old Master. His intimately observed, vivid and profoundly atmospheric works are what many museum-goers consider traditional painting ought to be. But in his own lifetime Rembrandt was not always so well regarded. The expressive honesty of his paintings and prints could evoke disdain as easily as admiration. For more than a century after his death his style was dismissed by many academically trained art theorists and critics. In the nineteenth century, however, he was championed by artists fired by the revolution and change of their times. For them, Rembrandt was a kindred, radical spirit, his paintings imbued with a truly modern ethos. Born at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the Golden Age of the newly formed Dutch Republic, Rembrandt found early fame and great wealth as a painter, living with the opulence of a rock star. But he spent way beyond his means. When, midway through his career, public taste turned away from him, these combined factors proved ruinous. For the rest of his life he would be destitute, crippled by debt, the loss of patrons and the deaths of loved ones. Nonetheless, he continued to paint with the same passion. The art he produced in his final years is arguably his most enduringly sensitive and open.