Rembrandt and Turner - Mythical Masters (Paperback, 1)

A study of the masters Rembrandt van Rijn and JMW Turner exhibited at Tate Britain and the National Gallery London. The point is that Rembrandt and Turner (plus, with perhaps more reason,Titian and Michelangelo, who both lived to be much older than Rembrandt ) are regularly cited as artists who developed 'late styles', which have since been regarded as proof of superior genius. The idea evolved in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. It was at that time that the term 'Alterstil' - 'old age style' was coined in German. There is an excellent discussion of this in the first chapter of the catalogue of the current Rembrandt show at the N.G. Here's a quote: "The nineteenth century cult of genius, in addition to the ideological encumbrance of Rembrandt being claimed as a member of the Germanic people, resulted in his late work in particular being considered as an example of Alterstil par excellence. The art historians Carl Neumann and Georg Simmel notably saw in him a confirmation of their theory that exceptional artists ascend at the end of their lives to a spiritual state that defies rational understanding; isolated from the world, they create artistic soliloquies, thevfull meanings of which others can only guess at." Edward Lucie-Smith to the editor, October 2014