Art review: Rembrandt - Britain’s Discovery of the Master, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Rembrandt’s Mill was once called “the greatest painting in the world”. Correspondingly there was public consternation at its export to America in 1911. It is now in the National Gallery in Washington. You can however now see it in Edinburgh where it is one of the stars of Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master. It is a wonderful painting. Turner said that Rembrandt had “thrown (over it) that veil of matchless colour: that lucid interval of morning dawn and dewy light.” Beneath dark clouds of night, the mill’s sails catch the first pink light of dawn. A fisherman is out already and a woman is washing clothes. An old lady leads a child, perhaps to school. It is easy to see the picture as emblematic of the Netherlands looking forward to an end to the long war with Spain and to the peace finally established with the Treaty of Munster in 1648, the year the picture was finished. There are other stunning pictures in this show, too, however. The National Gallery’s own lovely A Woman in Bed, for instance, is partnered by the enchanting painting from Dulwich of a girl at a window. In similar mode are An Old Woman Reading and the touching picture of Rembrandt’s son, Titus, at his desk, nominally doing his homework, but plainly dreaming of other things. The big, dramatic painting of Belshazzar’s Feast is a reminder that Rembrandt wasn’t always quiet and pensive, although another star of the show, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, shows him at his quietest and most magical. Camped by a fire, the Holy Family make a little cocoon of light and warmth in the darkness. The firelight is reflected in a river in the foreground, but being Rembrandt the warmth and light are somehow human, not just a skilful study in painted illumination.