Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Clark, Kenneth Mackenzie - Robert Cahn (review date 1 May 1978)

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Robert Cahn (review date 1 May 1978)

SOURCE: Cahn, Robert. Review of An Introduction to Rembrandt, by Kenneth Clark. Library Journal 103 (1 May 1978): 963-64.

[In the following review, Cahn characterizes Clark's An Introduction to Rembrandt as “insightful” and “elegant.”]

Shunning both biographical romanticism and purely formal and iconographical analysis, Lord Clark has authored a most insightful and humane Rembrandt primer. Pedantry and sentimentality are avoided in favor of an informed and maturely felt meditation on the works and their creator. The elegantly written essays [in An Introduction to Rembrandt] delve into the master's oeuvre and career from both thematic and evolutionary vantage points. Thus, while there are individual considerations of the complex and profoundly autobiographical self-portraits, Rembrandt's rebellious anti-classical realism and the idiosyncratically selected biblical...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. W. H. Godfrey (review date April 1930)
   2. Derek Hill (review date 4 November 1949)
   3. Clive Bell (review date 26 November 1949)
   4. Anne Fremantle (review date 16 June 1950)
   5. Adrian Stokes (review date 30 March 1951)
   6. Bernard Denvir (review date June 1951)
   7. Atlantic (review date November 1960)
   8. Christopher Salvesen (review date 25 January 1963)
   9. Richard Beale (review date 15 October 1966)
   10. Richard Luckett (review date 22 December 1973)
   11. Kay Dick (essay date 19 October 1974)
   12. Jan Morris (essay date 15 October 1977)
   13. Publishers Weekly (review date 24 April 1978)
   14. Robert Cahn (review date 1 May 1978)
   15. Eleanor Riley (review date 1 December 1980)
   16. Lynda Nead (essay date 1992)
   17. Charles Moore (review date 16 October 1993)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright