If you manage to watch My Rembrandt, which I highly recommend, you may, as we were, be slightly baffled by exactly what Jan Six, the hero of the film, did wrong. It is half explained in the attached long article in the New York Times, but only half.
If you manage to watch My Rembrandt, which I highly recommend, you may, as we were, be slightly baffled by exactly what Jan Six, the hero of the film, did wrong. It is half explained in the attached long article in the New York Times, but only half.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
The art world, especially the nexus between ‘the trade’ and scholarship, doesn’t take kindly to being publicly shown up, especially by those somehow deemed to be outside the system. It can be needlessly snobbish, pompous, conservative, closed-minded, and much else. If Jan did anything wrong, it was to underestimate that.
Yes, he maybe made a mistake in promoting his discovery so ostentatiously, thereby putting people’s backs up. Not the way of the Old Master world, as you and I both know. Charles