Pen and brown ink with grey wash, 127x95mm

Born to a family of millers in Leiden, Rembrandt left university at 14 to pursue a career as an artist. The decision turned out to be a good one since after serving his apprenticeship in Amsterdam he was singled out by Constantijn Huygens, the most influential patron in Holland.

In 1634 he married Saskia van Uylenburgh. In 1649, following Saskia's death from tuberculosis, Hendrickje Stoffels entered Rembrandt's household and six years later they had a son.

Rembrandt's success in his early years was as a portrait painter to the rich denizens of Amsterdam at a time when the city was being transformed from a small nondescript port into the economic capital of the world. His historical and religious paintings also gave him wide acclaim.

Despite being known as a portrait painter Rembrandt used his talent to push the boundaries of painting. This direction made him unpopular in the later years of his career as he shifted from being the talk of the town to becoming adrift in the Amsterdam art scene and criticised by his peers.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

Brush and brown wash with some white bodycolour, 246x203mm

Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669)
Pen and brown iron-gall ink, on paperwashed brown, 188x164mm

At The British Museum

A Master of the erotic thème, as he was of many thèmes and styles,
Pablo Picasso did his most erotic series of drawings in 1968 at the age of 87.
This period includes the finest of the Master's erotic works, yet he exhibited another erotic series
painted when he was 90.
Artists seen with their models, bearded bull-like satyrs and women accompanied by saylors were favorit 
subjects to be interpreted in picasso's free style. 

This tortured figure of a man with an erection is a self-portrait painted by Schiele near the end of his short life.
After ten years of financially unrewarding effort, Schiele had an exhibition in 1918 that was a complete success.
But the artist did not enjoy it. He and his wife died in that same year.

Refinement of technique and of sentiment is reflected in this erotic drawing by the Viennese artist Gustav Klimt.
klimt who was at the height of his fame during the early years of the last century, skillfully used the clothing of his models to herhance the overall erotic effect, rarely revealing them nude.

MacNeil Whistler, Rotherhithe, 1860 Etching and drypoint.

Between 1863 and 1902 the famous American painter and Etcher james MacNeil Whistler visited the netherlands on several occasions. During is travels in the Netherlands he stayed for a time in Amsterdam,The Hague, Dordrecht, and various towns and villages on the island of Walcheren. In Amsterdam he choose to portray not the familiar landmarks of the city, But rather the picturesque, if somewhat dilapidated, backstreets of the old city centre, often from the vantage point of a boat. These prints, with their often strangely truncated buildings, are suggestive of photographs. At first his work came in for considerable criticism, but before long it was being imitaded by such Dutch artists as Willem Witsen, George Breigtner and Carol Storm van 's gravesande. Like their American colleague, they "took to water", and did their own prints, watercolours, Photographs and Paintings of those city backwaters.