Rembrandt van Rijn

“ Two of the dated portraits are of himself; one with the full date is in the Louvre [No. 2555] , and one with a doubtful date belongs to Sir A. D. Neeld. Both are of extreme interest in their bearing on the personal history of Rembrandt. The portrait of the year before, belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, shows us a man bearing some traces indeed of a struggle with adversity, but of a not altogether unsuccessful one. The character has been developed rather than shaken in the strife; the man is still strong in body, firm in mind ”

“ It is impossible to look on this and doubt that it is an admirable likeness of a delightful old man. With what a shrewd humorous expression he sits in that high-backed arm-chair, surmounted by lions' heads, which figures in so many of Rembrandt's portraits at that time. How broad and easy, yet neither over-laboured nor careless, is the handling. Rembrandt never worked better, and one cannot but feel convinced, in regarding the result, that, to both artist and sitter, the work was a labour of love, and the sittings periods of mutual enjoyment. ”

“ All other works of that year are, however, eclipsed by the artist's masterpiece, which, if it alone remained in existence, would compel us to place Rembrandt in the very highest rank of painters—"The Syndics of the Drapers," at Amsterdam [No. 1247] .
After that eventful year, the record is a thin one. The very next, indeed, is the other of which no known picture survives. There are a pair of portraits, the "Man" in the collection of M. Maurice Kann, the "Woman" in that of M. Rodolphe Kann, which may have been painted that year ”

“ Among all the portraits of Rembrandt, real or supposed, there is none which makes one feel so strongly that here, indeed, one is face to face with him, as he saw himself when he sat drawing from the mirror in front of him. ”

“ It is a study of little more than the head, presenting one of those effects of contrasted light and shade which he so loved that pseudo-art slang has nicknamed them of late years Rembrandt effects. The shadows are a little dark, the contrasts are a little forced, wanting the true gradations, but the power displayed is so great, the frankness of the handling so certain that, especially in a photograph, the little study has all the appearance of a life-sized picture. ”

“ The transition from the loving care bestowed upon the splendid study of the gnarled and shattered willow-tree in front, through the more broadly yet quite adequately expressed foliage behind it on the left, to the slight yet all-sufficient treatment of the river and landscape beyond it on the right, shows a precise adaptation of the necessary means to the desired end, which, had no other line of Rembrandt's etching come down to us, would have been enough to stamp him as the finest known exponent of the art. ”

“ There are three other "Portraits of Himself," "A Head of a Boy," "A Young Man Laughing," and a "St Peter," all painted about that time; but of more importance are two small subject-pictures. The first, signed R.H., but not dated, "Christ at Emmaus," in the possession of Madame André-Jacquemart of Paris, is the earliest example of that presentment of a group of figures lighted by artificial light, to which Rembrandt was so partial. ”

“ REMBRANDT AND SASKIA
(ABOUT 1635)
Rembrandt, at some time before his marriage, had removed from the Bloemgracht to Saint Antonies Breestraat, in the heart of the city, close to the Nieuwe Markt, and by 1636 had moved once more to the Nieuwe Doelstraat, whence the letter to Huygens, already referred to, was addressed. There can be no doubt that the change was an improvement, for the [Pg 25] artist must then have been at the height of his prosperity and fame.
Throughout Holland, imitators of his style were springing up, for the public would have no other. His studio was freely sought by pupils ”

“ In such a plate as the "Blind Tobit" (B. 42) there is not a detail of the technique which other men could not have done as well; but for such another presentment of the hurried, helpless groping for the door by a blind, weak old man not yet inured to the perpetual darkness that has fallen on him, we must wait for a second Rembrandt—and the wait is likely to be long. ”

“ By that time Rembrandt's utter [Pg 39] incapacity for business was probably recognised even by himself, and all that Titus possessed was left to Hendrickje and her daughter Cornelia in trust for him. Nevertheless, as if to smooth over the slur upon his father's improvidence, he provided that Rembrandt might draw a certain share, on condition that he did not employ it to pay his debts, a most unlikely use, it is to be feared, for him to put it to, except, like Falstaff, "upon compulsion." The remainder was to go to Cornelia on her marriage or coming of age. ”

“ At what time in 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam we have no means of judging, nor can we say with any certainty which pictures of that year were painted before, which after, his change of residence. A "Bust of his Father," signed R.H.L. 1631, the property of Mr Fleischmann, was probably among the former. The "Young Man with the Turban," at Windsor, must also, presumably, have been painted before his removal, if M. Michel is justified in his belief that it is a portrait of Gerard Dou. Of the others we know nothing that points either way. ”

“ The merit of the work is no less dubious ground for judgment; for while producing, over and over again, masterpieces of the art that have never been equalled, [Pg 92] he at other times, through carelessness, indifference, or perhaps ill-health, turned out and left for future ages stuff which most far inferior men would have obliterated there and then. We can only decide each for ourselves that such or such a plate is in no way worthy of Rembrandt, but, unless we have the courage of M. Legros, we cannot go on to assert definitely that therefore it is not his. ”

“ REMBRANDT THE PAINTER CHAPTER V EARLY YEARS (1627-1633)
Of the blank spaces in the record of Rembrandt's career, none is so long or so inexplicable as that which begins with his return from Amsterdam to Leyden in 1624. Here the track breaks off abruptly, and we can be sure of nothing until we come to the first known pictures signed by him, and dated 1627.
We will take first the picture discovered by Sir J. C. Robinson about twenty years ago, and presented by him to the Berlin Gallery. It represents a wrinkled old man, seated at a table. ”

“ He will, in especial, discover, if he compares Rembrandt's etched work with that of other masters, and without doing so he can never rightly understand it, that it is not in technique, masterly as that often is, so much as in expressiveness that his pre-eminence lies. It is in the mental qualities more than in the manual, that he so incomparably excels. ”

“ A far more satisfactory production, indeed the best of the year, is "The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight" (B. 83) , with its bold drawing and coarse yet effective handling, but, like all the work of 1654, it has serious and obvious defects; while the last to be noted, "The Game of Golf" or Kolf (B. 125) , is yet another instance of Rembrandt's contentedly signing a work which would disgrace a man without a tithe of his genius, and is one of those plates which, if it be authentic—and no one else that I know of disputes it—renders any test of genuineness by workmanship impossible. ”

“ The answer is simple, if unsatisfactory: there is not, there never has been, there never can be. There is no style to judge by; for Rembrandt had half-a-dozen styles at least, and employed them all together or separately as he listed. The signature is no guide, for many beautiful works of his have none, and many that are not his bear forged ones. ”

“ In the debatable land between the late forties and the early fifties there are two magnificent works, one, oddly included in the usual classifications among the portraits, "Dr Faustus" (B. 270) , the other the famous Hundred Guilder print, "Jesus Christ healing the Sick" (B. 74) . There are, all told, twenty-eight etchings dating between 1640 and 1650.
Only eighteen of uncertain date are placed between 1650 and the end of Rembrandt's career as an etcher in 1661, but they are nearly all worthy of more space than can be devoted to them. ”

“ REMBRANDT THE ETCHER CHAPTER VIII HISTORY OF THE ETCHINGS
We have seen how Rembrandt the painter, after having risen to the foremost place among his fellow-craftsmen in Holland, fell a victim to the always unaccountable change of fashion that has cast a blight upon many another man. ”

“ One is a landscape, "The Sportsman" (B. 211) . Five are portraits, one of "A Youth," long known as Rembrandt, but undoubtedly his son Titus (B. 11) ; the large one of "Coppenol" (B. 283) , probably among the last of the etchings, but beautifully and minutely finished in an exquisitely delicate fashion, though the hands are less well expressed than usual with Rembrandt, who, whether in painting or drawing, delighted in bringing out with care the full character revealed by them ”

“ By this time there is some reason for supposing that yet another trouble was coming upon Rembrandt. As far as we know, he never executed any etchings after 1661, and M. Michel suspected that this might have been due to failing sight. A study, moreover, of the portraits painted from that time onwards, reveals the fact that a large majority of them, if not actually all, were conspicuously, some even enormously, larger than life, and that would in all probability be a symptom of the same misfortune. ”

“ The experience of a young fellow-artist probably suggested the answer. About the time Rembrandt entered Swanenburch's studio Jan Lievensz, a fellow-citizen, a year younger than Rembrandt, who had, however, entered upon his artistic studies while Rembrandt was still struggling with, or against, the detested Latin, returned from completing his studies in the studio of Pieter Lastman at Amsterdam. ”

“ In a very large number of cases, I suspect, they were given as presents to any sympathetic soul who had enough taste to appreciate them for their merits, or intelligence enough to foresee that they might some day prove of value. In the case of a portrait, at any rate, we know that he gave proofs to his sitter as the work went on, for on one of the first portrait of Sylvius, done in 1634, there is a note in Rembrandt's hand showing that it was one of four presented by him to the minister.
Others, again, would be given to fellow-artists, such [Pg 89] as Lievensz, who etched also. ”

“ One of the two subject-pictures, in the Six collection, Amsterdam, is a sketch, broadly but expressively handled, of "Joseph interpreting his Dreams," signed with the full name Rembrandt, 1630. The other, signed R.H.L. 1630, in the collection of Count Stroganoff, is of doubtful import. It represents an old man seated in a cave, resting his head upon his right hand, while his left rests on a large book. Beside him lie a cloth embroidered with gold, various gold vessels, and other objects of value. In the distance is seen a town in flames, from which the inhabitants are hurriedly escaping. ”

“ Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, Dutch painter, was born in Leiden on the 15th of July 1606. It is only within the past fifty years that we have come to know anything of his real history. A tissue of fables formerly represented him as ignorant, boorish and avaricious. ”

“ CHAPTER IX THE AUTHENTIC ETCHINGS
In the entire absence of any evidence to the contrary, we are reasonably safe in concluding that the two etchings dated 1628 were, if not actually the first, among the very first he ever did; and, regarded in this light, they are truly astonishing. Both are called Rembrandt's mother, though the one in full face (B. 352) seems to represent a woman in a much humbler station of life than the stately old lady in the other (B. 354) , while both, furthermore, seem to portray a woman much more advanced in years than his mother was at that time. ”

“ At any rate, in the summer of 1635, we find Saskia revisiting Sainte Anne Parrochie, to be with Hiskia during her confinement, and subsequently at the baptism of the child, a mark of kindly feeling the more notable in that she herself was about to become a mother. In the early winter, having returned meanwhile to her home, she gave birth to a son, who, on December 15th, in the Oudekerk, was christened Rombertus, after her father. Rembrandt's delight in this small person is indicated by numerous sketches of him and his mother ”

“ Saskia was born in 1612 at Leeuwarden, the chief town of Friesland in the north, across the Zuider Zee, and at the time when Rembrandt met her was an orphan, her mother, Sjukie Osinga, having died in 1619, and her father, Rombertus, a distinguished lawyer in his native place, in 1624. The family left behind was a large one, consisting, besides Saskia, of three brothers, two being lawyers and one a soldier, and five sisters, all married, who, as soon as the worthy Rombertus was laid to rest, seem to have begun wrangling among themselves concerning the estate ”

“ Of the next two years we know nothing, except that we learn from a portrait of Jeremias de Decker, a poet who wrote eulogistic verses on the painter, that neither the man [Pg 46] nor the artist was entirely neglected. The first sounds that come again to us out of the darkness are those of wedding bells on the occasion of the marriage of Titus with his cousin Magdalena, the daughter of Cornelia van Uylenborch and of Albert van Loo, whose quarrel with Rembrandt years before had clearly been forgotten. ”