July is a month singularly rich in artist birthdays. Just look at this list of illuminati: John Singleton Copley, Jean Cocteau, Frida Kahlo, Marc Chagall, David Hockney, Camille Pissarro, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Amedeo Modigliani, Andrew Wyeth, Gustav Klimt, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Judy Chicago, Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Eakins, George Grosz, Beatrix Potter, Marcel Duchamp, and Henry Moore. To name just a few. I mean, who wasn’t born in July?! But in terms of cinematic portrayals, two stand out: Frida Kahlo and Rembrandt.

Kahlo, the Mexican painter known for her revealing self-portraits and melding of folk art and Surrealism, has been the subject of intense scrutiny for a number of years now. Many films have been made about her, including a major documentary examination from last year, Frida Kahlo. But the best known is still 2002’s Frida, starring and co-produced by Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek. This ambitious biopic traces the artist’s life from the crippling bus accident that turned her from medical studies to painting at 18, through her two stormy marriages to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), to her death at 47, having achieved recognition as one of Mexico’s premier artists. Uneven but impassioned, Frida vividly—in brilliant colors and imaginative uses of animation--depicts the inspirations behind some of her best-known paintings, as well as her bisexuality, the mutual infidelities that made the Kahlo-Rivera relationship so turbulent, and her Communist politics. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Hayek as best actress, and scored well with critics and moviegoers, rewarding the vision of those who toiled long years (Hayak’s personal campaign to make and star in the film lasted seven) to bring the life of this extraordinary woman and artist to the big screen. Sadly, films like Frida are still too rare.

But now we come to the granddaddy of all artist movie biographies--the 1936 British picture Rembrandt starring Charles Laughton and directed by Alexander Korda, the team that scored an international hit (and an Oscar for Laughton) with The Private Life of Henry VIII three years before. Much like Henry, Rembrandt picks up its subject in midlife at the peak of his success and charts his downward spiral through a series of setbacks to his sad and lonely old age. Debt-ridden and depressed after the death of his wife, Rembrandt quarrels with patrons and sees a once admiring public turn against him over scandals in his private life. The painter didn’t have six wives, just two mistresses, but the notoriety of these liaisons exacerbates the decline in his fortunes. At film’s end, impoverished and alone, the aged Rembrandt buys paint instead of food so he can start another painting, his passion for art undimmed by the vicissitudes of life. The film is creaky in places but still affecting, buoyed by Laughton’s sensitive performance. A notoriously hammy actor, his uncharacteristic restraint in this role imbues its pathos with tragic dignity. The result is a portrait worthy of the great Dutch Master himself.

More recent treatments of Rembrandt include a French-German-Dutch biographical drama with Klaus Maria Brandauer (Rembrandt, 1999) and Nightwatching, a 2007 film about events surrounding the creation of his most famous painting, Night Watch (originally titled Military Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch).

Recordings of the the recent Art in the Afternoon programs on Zoom are now available on the ArtiFactory YouTube channel.