Louise Jury on how John and Charlotte Gere acquired paintings for a few pounds that are now on show at the National Gallery

Sir: The marvellous news this week that Sir Denis Mahon has agreed to give the National Gallery 28 pictures from his celebrated collection is a great coup for the gallery.

The late John Gere, Keeper of Drawings at the British Museum and a distinguished art historian, was also an inspired collector of a very specific sort of painting. Over a period of about 40 years, he and his wife Charlotte amassed one of the finest private collections anywhere of landscape oil sketches - direct studies made en plein air usually on a small scale, often as a prelude to a "finished" painting.

Rembrandt by Himself National Gallery, WC2 (0171 747 2885) to 5 Sept

Rembrandt by Himself National Gallery, London

A visit to the Royal Academy ends in an unexpected purchase, while another trip leads to an intimate acquaintance with an old Dutchman

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Rembrandt's self-portraits are a byword for intense self-scrutiny. But the honesty lies in his recognition of the mercurial nature of personality.

A few years ago the Independent on Sunday conducted a poll of artists, curators and art historians in search of "the greatest painting in Britain". The most nominated, by some margin, was Rembrandt's late, great, and rather odd self portrait from the collection of Kenwood House. It is currently on loan to the National Gallery alongside some 70 or so other Rembrandt self portraits gathered from around the world and spanning the life and career of art history's most painted face. He wasn't a pretty man, but his skills were always at their best when engaged in the powerful intensity of self scrutiny.

AN ELDERLY woman from the Midlands is expected to become the first British relative of a Holocaust victim to reclaim a work of art sold to the Nazis at forced "Jew auctions".

Why does an artist paint his own portrait? Is it posing, play- acting or self-obsession, or is there perhaps a higher purpose? The 20 or so self-portraits painted by Rembrandt towards the end of his life show a face ravaged by debt, drink and grief. And yet his challenging gaze looks beyond the darkness, bigotry and indifference of his times, with something like hope

National Gallery: Colin Wiggins, "Reading (i): reading Poussin", 1pm.

A new film about pioneering painter Artemisia Gentileschi has outraged feminists. Director Agnes Merlet defends her version to Robin Buss

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