A Rembrandt Etching

The other day we finished unpacking the 99 cartons we had sent from Jerusalem in 2008 and which resided in a Bronx warehouse until a few weeks ago.  It was only on the last day of unpacking that we came across an artwork that we feared might be missing, a Rembrandt etching.  It’s not terribly valuable - appraised a few years ago at $750 -  since it’s a second strike and we have neither a date for its printing nor any information about its provenance. 

My wife inherited it on the death of her father, while we were living in Jerusalem.  She picked it up on a trip to America, during which time we bought two large framed prints by the printmaker Virginia Myers.  We took all three pieces of art back to Jerusalem, in addition to my wife’s great-grandmother’s sterling silver service.  When we went through Israeli customs, we stopped to declare the art and the silver. 

“What do you have here?” asked the customs officer.  “My great-grandmother’s silver,” answered my wife.  “I don’t want to know about it,” he said, whether from the goodness of his heart or because antique silver was not dutiable, we don’t know.  “And we have some pictures, too,” said my wife, which was perfectly obvious from the package’s size and wrapping.  “I suppose you have a Rembrandt there,” said the customs officer, to which I replied “yeah, sure!”  And then he waved us through.

I’ve always felt slightly guilty about that “yeah, sure!”  This was, of course, in effect a lie. But telling him that indeed we did have a Rembrandt would have caused us a lengthy delay, as he tried to determine its value, which in any event was about what we had paid for Virginia Myers's prints, on which he had charged no duty.  So I said “yeah, sure.”   Well, nobody’s perfect.

Rembrandt looks out at us full-faced, unsmiling, the upper part of his head shadowed by a floppy brimmed hat.  “Take me as I am,” his uncompromising stare seems to be saying.  In his left hand he holds a thin tool of some sort.  His wife, sitting or standing behind him (we see their upper bodies only), looks towards him, showing us three-fourths of her unsmiling face.  She wears a lace cap towards the back of her head, so that we see her hair. They’d been married for about two years, when he made this etching in 1636, and it’s likely that neither of them dreamt that she would be dead in another six.

Nor could they have imagined that the country in which his biblical art was set would again become a Jewish state and that two Jews would bring a print of this etching to Jerusalem, where a kind customs officer would accept two positives as a negative.  


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