Rembrandt’s First Paintings: The Four Senses

Rembrandt’s earliest known paintings, The Four Senses, a set of four small panels representing sight, hearing, smell and touch, can be seen in the Rembrandt House Museum from 1 December 2016 to 12 February 2017. Rembrandt very probably painted these works as part of a complete set of the five senses, but so far no trace has been found of Taste. For a long time only three of the panels in the set were known, but Smell surfaced at a sale in New Jersey last year. The French art dealer who discovered it sold it on to the New York collector Thomas Kaplan. After restoration, this spectacular find was presented at last year’s TEFAF in Maastricht. It is the first time the four small panels have been brought together in the Netherlands and – fittingly – in Rembrandt’s former home.

Rembrandt’s earliest known paintings, The Four Senses, a set of four small panels representing sight, hearing, smell and touch, can be seen in the Rembrandt House Museum from 1 December 2016 to 12 February 2017. Rembrandt very probably painted these works as part of a complete set of the five senses, but so far no trace has been found of Taste. For a long time only three of the panels in the set were known, but Smell surfaced at a sale in New Jersey last year. The French art dealer who discovered it sold it on to the New York collector Thomas Kaplan. After restoration, this spectacular find was presented at last year’s TEFAF in Maastricht. It is the first time the four small panels have been brought together in the Netherlands and – fittingly – in Rembrandt’s former home.

The three works owned by Kaplan were shown for the first time last summer in The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. At present the four senses can be seen at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. After the show in the Rembrandt House, the works will travel to Musée du Louvre in Paris.