Golden Masterpiece Series: Rembrandt

Rembrandt, Young Girl at an Open Half-Door

Golden, 1970s(?), Masterpiece Series

1505 pieces

27"x33"

purchased sealed (complete) from ebay ($20)

Difficulty level: Very tough bordering on brutal

There are ten puzzles in Golden's Masterpiece Series (that I've identified: Rembrandt, Canaletto, Cezanne, Robert, Toulouse Lautrec, Courbet, Chardin, Degas, Renoir, and Manet), but this is the first one I've picked up.

This is where I got after one evening of working on the easy parts:

Once you assemble the frame, head, hands, necklace, and start on the wooden walls, you are left with over 1000 pieces in varying shades of brown:

I had to get a reading lamp and sit like a forensic examiner dividing all the brown pieces into groups, depending on their coloration--mottled brown (upper door), brown with black streaks (lower door), black with horizontal brown streaks (upper dress), black with vertical brown streaks (lower dress), to the point where I asked myself "Am I insane?" but then I'd snap together six or seven pieces and dove back in. Still very slow going, since the majority of the pieces left had little in terms of color variation.

Once I had enough pieces in place horizontally, I realized that for the most part, each horizontal row has a repeating pattern of two types of pieces.

Since everything left was either a dark brown or black with little to differentiate them, I separated them by shape. Then I just determined the types of pieces needed for a row across, and started using trial and error, and the big expanses of dark brown and black began filling in:

The last 218 pieces were tough. Almost no variation in color and all were the same basic shape, but it's done. A fun puzzle and a beautiful painting, but I think for the next one I will do something that's not so dark.