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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rembrandt
+
+Author: Josef Israels
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2007 [EBook #20607]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMBRANDT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chrome, Michael Ciesielski, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
+
+EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE
+
+In the Same Series
+
+Artist.               Author.
+VELAZQUEZ.            S. L. Bensusan.
+REYNOLDS.             S. L. Bensusan.
+TURNER.               C. Lewis Hind.
+ROMNEY.               C. Lewis Hind.
+GREUZE.               Alys Eyke Macklin.
+BOTTICELLI.           Henry B. Binns.
+ROSSETTI.             Lucien Pissarro.
+BELLINI.              George Hay.
+FRA ANGELICO.         James Mason.
+LEIGHTON.             A. Lys Baldry.
+REMBRANDT.            Josef Israels.
+WATTS.                W. Loftus Hare.
+TITIAN.               S. L. Bensusan.
+RAPHAEL.              Paul G. Konody.
+
+_Others in Preparation._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE 1.--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN
+
+This portrait, painted about 1633, and one of the gems of the Wallace
+Collection, presents Susanna van Collen, wife of Jan Pellicorne, and her
+daughter.]
+
+
+
+REMBRANDT
+
+BY JOSEF ISRAELS
+
+ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+
+The plates are printed by Bemrose Dalziel, Ltd., Watford
+
+The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Plate
+I. Suzanna Van Collen                 Frontispiece
+    From the Wallace Collection
+
+                                                Page
+II. A Portrait of Saskia                          14
+    In the Brera, Milan
+
+III. Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild        24
+    In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam
+
+IV. Portrait of an Old Man                        34
+    In the Pitti Palace at Florence
+
+V. The Company of Francis Banning Cocq            40
+    In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam
+
+VI. Portrait of a Young Man                       50
+    In the Pitti Palace at Florence
+
+VII. Portrait of an Old Lady                      60
+    From the National Gallery, London
+
+VIII. Head of a Young Man                         70
+    In the Louvre
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+While the world pays respectful tribute to Rembrandt the artist, it has
+been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small
+measure of reliable information concerning Rembrandt the man. The
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little
+concerned with personalities. A man was judged by his work which
+appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. There
+were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an
+artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life.
+Sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip,
+quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate
+generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great
+work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes
+as Rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the
+details of their sojourn unrecorded.
+
+Rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to
+have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no
+capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated
+in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much.
+Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his
+collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a
+fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and
+wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said
+about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was
+recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather
+up such fragments of biography as they could find.
+
+Shakespeare has put into Mark Antony's mouth the statement that "the
+evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with
+Rembrandt van Ryn. His first biographers seem to have no memory save
+for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts. They
+remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his studio
+was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could accommodate,
+that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling house, and that in
+short, he had every chance that would have led a good business man to
+prosperity and an old age removed from stress and strain. These facts
+seem to have aroused their ire. They have assailed his memory with
+invective that does not stop short at false statement. They have found
+in the greatest of all Dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take
+advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company
+promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose
+living.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA
+
+Rembrandt's portraits of his wife Saskia are distributed fairly equally
+throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the Brera in
+Milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced
+here. It is called "Portrait of a Woman" in the catalogue, but the
+features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.]
+
+Alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to
+trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would
+have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as
+they imagined. Happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the
+painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men.
+Further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from
+Rembrandt's name; MM. Vosmaer and Michel have restored it as though it
+were a discoloured picture, and those who hail Rembrandt master may do
+so without mental reservation. His faults were very human ones and his
+merits leave them in the shade.
+
+Rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of Leyden, but it is not easy to
+name the precise year. Somewhere between 1604 and 1607 he started his
+troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are
+scanty. Doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of
+the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that
+were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed
+land. Perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for
+he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a
+picture lying ready for treatment. Even when he was a little boy the
+fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for
+the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon
+reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less
+than the labour involved in their acquisition. And yet his father was a
+wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his
+studies, and the best one can find to say about these early years is
+that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. In any
+case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. The boy who
+sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the
+horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a
+moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the
+school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if
+Rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way
+for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has
+found a home.
+
+His family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in 1620,
+when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been
+considerably less, he left Leyden University for the studio of a
+second-rate painter called Jan van Swanenburch. We have no authentic
+record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. He
+must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. At
+the end of three years he went to Lastman's studio in Amsterdam,
+returning thence to Leyden, where he took Gerard Dou as a pupil. A few
+years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory
+basis, he went to Amsterdam, and established himself there, because the
+Dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in
+spite of the seemingly endless war that Holland was waging with Spain.
+
+The picture of "St. Paul in Prison" would seem to have been produced
+about 1627, but the painter's appearance before the public of Amsterdam
+in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned
+with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous
+"Anatomy Lesson," in 1631 or 1632. At this time he was living on the
+Bloemgracht. Rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of
+the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we
+remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old,
+and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to
+understand that Amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and
+greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. In a few weeks the entrance to
+the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their
+portraits, by pupils who brought 100 florins, no small sum in those days
+for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. It may
+be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity
+with the general public of Holland had waned, there was never any lack
+of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for
+admission to the studio.
+
+Many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater
+trial. Bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative
+genius; success tends to destroy it. Rembrandt did not remain unaffected
+by the quick response that Amsterdam made to his genius. His art
+remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession
+to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know
+what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so
+freely. The best use he made of changing circumstances was to become
+engaged to Saskia van Uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend
+Hendrick van Uylenborch, the art dealer of Amsterdam. Saskia, who was
+destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems
+to have been born in 1612, and to have become engaged to Rembrandt when
+she was twenty. The engagement followed very closely upon the patronage
+of Rembrandt by Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder, who instructed
+the artist to paint three pictures. There seemed no longer any need to
+hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage
+until 1634. Saskia is enshrined in many pictures. She is seen first as a
+young girl, then as a woman. As a bride, in the picture now at Dresden,
+she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his
+outstretched arm. Her expression here is rather shy, as if she
+deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued.
+This picture gave offence to Rembrandt's critics, who declared that it
+revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living--they
+could see nothing more in canvas than a story. Several portraits of
+Saskia remained to be painted. She would seem to have aged rapidly, for
+after marriage her days were not long in the land. She was only thirty
+when she died, and looked considerably older.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS' GUILD
+
+This fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day
+in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. It is one of the finest examples of
+the master's portrait groups, and was painted in 1661.]
+
+In the first years of his married life Rembrandt moved to the Nieuwe
+Doelstraat. For the time he had more commissions than he knew how to
+execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked,
+and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There
+can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years;
+he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for
+any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would
+be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great
+was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by
+Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid pearls
+that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his rash
+and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the
+prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would rush in where
+wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art collection, the
+purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed
+living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's estate. The artist's
+temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen who could not understand
+it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own
+judgment were more offensive still, and after 1636 there were fewer
+applications for portraits.
+
+In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van Loo,
+who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still more
+extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a
+case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have
+troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking
+more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he
+was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of raising children
+seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little
+Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had died soon after
+birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture remains on record
+with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the
+biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt was anything but
+a good son. A year later the well-beloved Saskia gave birth to the one
+child who survived the early years, the boy Titus. Then her health
+failed, and in 1642 she died, after eight years of married life that
+would seem to have been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous
+"Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning
+Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The
+work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter
+wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed
+equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose the picture!
+
+It may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this
+fine work, Rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. He was then
+somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his
+mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward,
+his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of
+disappointment, pain, and care. Perhaps it would have been no bad thing
+for him if he could have gone with Saskia into the outer darkness. The
+world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared
+many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not
+redeem.
+
+Saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left
+to Rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child Titus,
+but Rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble
+about the legal side of the question. He did not even make an inventory
+of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to
+endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part
+of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. Perhaps
+the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer
+disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. It
+may be that the war with Spain was beginning to make people in
+comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the
+artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. His
+passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects
+could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the
+rank and file of Amsterdam's comfortable classes. To be sure, the
+Stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous
+"Circumcision" and the "Adoration of the Shepherds." Pupils continued to
+arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond Holland;
+but the public stayed away.
+
+Rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could,
+and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man
+who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no
+outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. Money ran through
+his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point
+out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale
+of distress.
+
+Between 1642, when Saskia died, and 1649, it is not easy to follow the
+progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his
+difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. His
+connection with Hendrickje Stoffels would seem to have started about
+1649, and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen
+years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the
+painter's mistress. Some have endeavoured to prove, without any
+evidence, that he married her, but this concession to Mrs. Grundy seems
+a little beside the mark. The relations between the pair were a matter
+for their own consideration, and it is clear that Hendrickje came to the
+painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and
+faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of
+thirty-six.
+
+She bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously
+enough, her position in the house was accepted by young Titus Rembrandt,
+who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her,
+to deal in pictures and works of art--a not very successful attempt to
+support the establishment in comfort.
+
+In the year when Hendrickje joined Rembrandt, he could no longer pay
+instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the Joden
+Breestraat. About the following year he began to sell property, hoping
+against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. Three
+years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. In 1656 a
+fresh guardian was appointed for Titus, to whom his father transferred
+some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. The
+year 1657 saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of
+pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no
+more than 5000 florins. A year later his store of pictures came under
+the hammer, and in 1660, Hendrickje and Titus started their plucky
+attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore
+some small part of the family fortune.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN
+
+Rembrandt painted very many portraits of men and women whose identity
+cannot be traced, and it is probable that the original of this striking
+portrait in the Pitti Palace at Florence was unknown to many of the
+painter's contemporaries. This is one of Rembrandt's late works, and is
+said to have been painted about 1658.]
+
+For a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned.
+One of Rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the
+"Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," and this is one of the last works of
+importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to
+fail. To understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is
+necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he
+produced between 1628 and 1661. The drawings may be disregarded in this
+connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in
+existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are
+allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must
+have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. When he was passing from
+middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not
+surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer.
+
+One might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with
+Rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. One
+year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the
+faithful Hendrickje died. A portrait of her, one of the last of the
+master's works, may be seen in Berlin. The face is a charming and
+sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that
+makes the mere question of the Church's participation in her relations
+with Rembrandt a very small affair indeed.
+
+In the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the
+great silence. A few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old
+friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as
+they might. With failing sight and health he moved to the Lauriergracht,
+and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. The lawyers made merry
+with the various suits. Some had been instituted to recover money that
+the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the
+creditors' right to Saskia's estate. In 1665 Titus received the balance
+that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle
+what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound.
+
+In the summer of 1668, when he was about twenty-seven years old, Titus
+married his cousin Magdellena, and this little celebration may be
+supposed to have cheered the elder Rembrandt a little, but his pleasure
+was brief, for the young bridegroom died in September of the same year,
+and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born.
+
+By this time the immortals had completed their task, there was nothing
+left for them to do; they had broken the old painter's health and his
+heart, they had reduced him to poverty. So they gave him half a year to
+digest their gifts, and then some word of pity seems to have entered
+into their councils, and one of the greatest painters the world has seen
+was set free from the intolerable burden of life. From certain documents
+still extant we learn that he was buried at the expense of thirteen
+florins. He has left to the world some five or six hundred pictures that
+are admitted to be genuine, together with the etchings and drawings to
+which reference has been made. He is to be seen in many galleries in the
+Old World and the New, for he painted his own portrait more than a score
+of times. Saskia, too, may be seen in several galleries and Hendrickje
+has not been forgotten.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE COMPANY OF FRANCIS BANNING COCQ
+
+Generally known as the "Night Watch." This famous picture, now to be
+seen in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam, is the best discussed of all the
+master's works. It has been pointed out that it is in reality a day
+scene although it is known to most people as the "Night Watch." The
+picture was painted in 1642.]
+
+There is no doubt that many of Rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted;
+but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. His pictures may
+be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed,
+too, among private galleries. Rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all
+countries. We know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in
+Holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time,
+that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a
+little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. Now, in the years
+when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are
+silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of Velazquez and Titian.
+
+
+
+
+REMBRANDT
+
+AN APPRECIATION OF THE PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM
+
+
+Will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees,
+heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often?
+
+I feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of
+the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different
+toasts, I will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight
+in the festive gathering. I touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and I
+speak as my heart prompts me. It is not very important or interesting,
+but I am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given.
+
+In this frame of mind I am contributing my little share to the pile of
+written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of
+the great painter.
+
+
+I
+
+Many years ago I went to Amsterdam as an art student, to be trained
+under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter Kruseman. Very
+soon I was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration
+the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the
+time.
+
+The pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the
+draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a
+background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely.
+
+When, however, I expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these
+portraits, the master refused my request. "No," he said; "if you want to
+copy, go to the museum in the 'Trippenhuis.'"[1]
+
+I dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me.
+Having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book
+to me. I failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned
+scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. To my
+untrained eyes the exhibition in "Arti"[2] seemed infinitely more
+beautiful; and Pieneman, Gallait, Calame, and Koekoek especially excited
+my admiration.
+
+I was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my
+fellow-students, but I had not yet gained the experience and practice,
+which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but
+highly artistic qualities of the old Dutch masters. I maintain that
+however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old
+Dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become
+thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it.
+In order to be able to sound the real character and depth of
+manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and
+developed.
+
+It was long before I could summon up sufficient courage to enter this
+Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started
+on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as
+in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and
+many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness.
+
+I began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist
+in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. I realised that my
+chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of
+the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures.
+
+Having learned to look upon art from this point of view, I entered the
+old "Trippenhuis" with pleasure. Little by little the beauty and truth
+of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. I perceived that their
+simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in
+which they were treated. The artists were geniuses, and the world around
+them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late.
+
+Knowing little of art, I chose for my first copy a small canvas, a
+"Hermit" by Gerard Dou, not understanding that, though small, it might
+contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. I
+had to work it over and over again, for I could not get any shape in the
+thick, sticky paint. Then I tried a head by Van der Helst, and succeeded
+a little better.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
+
+This portrait may be seen to-day in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is
+said to be one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about
+1635.]
+
+At last I stopped before one of the heads in the "Syndics of the Cloth
+Merchants' Guild." The man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey
+hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. I felt that there was
+something in the portrait's beauty I could grasp and reproduce, though I
+saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from
+what I had attempted hitherto. However, the desire to reproduce this
+breadth of execution tempted me so much that I resolved to try my hand
+at it. I forget now what the copy looked like; I only remember that for
+years it hung on my studio wall.
+
+So I tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the
+different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "Night Patrol"
+and the "Syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but
+what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique Rembrandt.
+In his work I found something which all the others lacked. Freedom and
+exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and
+forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio.
+
+Although Frans Hals impressed me more than any other painter with the
+power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by
+Rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects.
+
+When I had looked at Rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, I used
+to go down to the ground floor in the "Trippenhuis" to the print
+cabinet. Here I found his etchings beautifully arranged. It was a
+pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table
+covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio
+and look at the gems they contained at leisure.
+
+I often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two
+hundred and forty masterpieces. The conservator never ceased urging me
+to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to
+compare them. How astonished I was to find in the painter who, with
+mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "Night Patrol," an
+accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a
+great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of
+the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper.
+
+Still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in
+these etchings. It was rather the singular inventive power shown in the
+different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the
+almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. The
+artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it
+found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate
+handling of the needle.
+
+Many Biblical subjects are represented in the Amsterdam collection; they
+are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in
+spite of their seeming incongruity. The conception is so highly
+original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding,
+that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted
+beside them.
+
+Among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike
+heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked
+at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the
+portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes.
+
+It is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving.
+Motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every
+curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. Each line has a meaning;
+not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole.
+
+Hokusai, the Japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old
+that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke
+of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. That is
+exactly what Rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he
+realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old Japanese; it is
+one of his earliest etchings.
+
+I re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful
+old Jewish beggars. They were types that were to be found by the score
+in the Amsterdam of those days, and Rembrandt delighted to draw them.
+One is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the
+master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which
+his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at.
+
+When I had looked enough at the etchings, I used to go home through the
+town, and it seemed to me as if I were meeting the very people I had
+just seen in the engravings. As I went through the "Hoog Straat" and
+"St. Anthony's Breestraat" to the "Joden Breestraat," where I lived a
+few doors from the famous house where Rembrandt dwelt and worked so
+long, I saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; I saw the vivid
+Hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women;
+the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses,
+the people, the sky. It was all Rembrandt--all Rembrandtesque. A great
+deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which I have
+been writing, yet, even now, whenever I pass through them I seem to see
+the colours, and the kind of people Rembrandt shows us in his works.
+
+In the meantime I had found a third manifestation of Rembrandt's talent,
+viz., his drawings. To a young painter, who himself was still groping in
+the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were
+exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus.
+
+Less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before I could
+properly appreciate them, but when I understood what I firmly believe
+still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting
+them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines I felt their
+true meaning. They were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings;
+emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. They have been
+thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand
+that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least
+sensation. When I looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by
+all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a
+seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully,
+they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a
+just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. The greater
+compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes--all
+are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
+
+This famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our National Gallery.
+It is on canvas 4 ft. 2+3/4 in. by 3 ft. 2 in.]
+
+One evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed
+us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however,
+being by contemporaries who had already become famous. Among them was
+one drawing by Rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar
+effect it produced in this collection. The scene represented on the old
+smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in
+composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the
+other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. Here was the
+master, towering above all.
+
+Thus I saw Rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and
+could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or
+etching needle. Whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a
+corner of old Amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful
+drawings. His pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naïve. His
+nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared
+paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt,
+entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of
+reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or
+June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's
+washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the
+canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood.
+
+And the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that
+one can never look too long at them. All his work is done with a
+light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once
+the idea of painful study and exertion.
+
+
+II
+
+What do I think of the master now, after so many years?
+
+Come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression
+of Rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "The Night Patrol."
+
+Our way leads us now to the Ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the newly
+built "Rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to obtain a
+full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the struggle it
+cost to erect this temple of art.
+
+At first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade,
+which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies.
+Then, suddenly, two men seem to step out from the group. The one is
+dressed in sombre-coloured clothes, whilst the other is resplendent in
+white. That is Rembrandt all over, not afraid of putting the light in
+bold contrast against the dark. So as to maintain the harmony between
+the two he makes the dark man lift his hand as if he were pointing at
+something, and in doing so, he casts a softening shadow on his brilliant
+companion. Genius finds a way where ordinary mortals are at a loss how
+to help themselves. Clearly these men are in earnest conversation with
+each other, and it is quite evident that they are the leaders of the
+company.
+
+But when everything was put on the canvas that he intended to put there,
+the master stood in front of it and shook his head.
+
+To him these two leaders did not stand out sufficiently from the rest.
+So he took up his palette again, and again he dipped his broadest
+brushes deep in paint and with a few mighty strokes he transformed these
+two figures; a little more depth here, some more light there. He tried
+every means to give the scene more depth, and a fuller meaning. Then he
+saw that it was all right and left it.
+
+The likeness of his patrons was, perhaps, not very exact and most likely
+some murmurs were raised at the want of minutely finished detail; but he
+did not heed such matters. To him the main point was to make his figures
+live and breathe and move; and see how he succeeded! From the plumes of
+their hats to the soles of their feet everything is living, tangible.
+How full of energy and character are their heads! Their dress, the steel
+gorget, the boots of the man in white; everything bears witness to the
+wonderful power of the master.
+
+And look at the man in black, with his red bandolier, his gloves, and
+his stick. This does not strike one as anything out of the common,
+because the composition is so true, so perfectly natural and simple. I
+cannot remember having seen a single picture in which the peculiar style
+and picturesqueness of those days is so vividly expressed, as in the
+figures of these two men calmly walking along on the giant canvas.
+
+Now let us turn to the right and have a look at the perspiring drummer.
+His pock-marked face, overshadowed by a frayed hat, is of the true
+Falstaff type. The swollen nose, the thick-lipped mouth, every detail is
+carried out with the daring of the true artist which characterises all
+the master's work. Look at him, drumming away as if he wanted to make it
+known that he himself is one of the most magnificent specimens of the
+work of the genius whom men call Rembrandt.
+
+On looking at this man I can understand why Gerard de Lairesse exclaimed
+in his great book on painting: "In Rembrandt's pictures the paint is
+running down the panel like mud!" But it was only his conscientious
+narrow-mindedness which made him say it. Genius never fails to get into
+conflict with narrow thought.
+
+But now let us turn our attention to the left-hand corner. There we see
+that pithy soldier all in red. Rembrandt, with his intuitive knowledge
+of chiaroscuro, was not afraid of painting a figure all in red. He knew
+that the play of light and shade on the colour would help him out. Here
+part of the red is toned down by a beautiful soft tint, which makes the
+whole figure blend harmoniously with the greyish-green of the others.
+This man in red, too, has been treated in the same masterly manner of
+which I spoke above. If one looks at him attentively, it seems as if the
+man, who apparently might step out of the canvas at any rate, had been
+painted with one powerful sweep of the brush. How firm is the treatment
+of the hand loading the gun; how true the shadows on the red hat and
+jerkin. There the figure stands, alert, living, full of movement, rich
+in colour.
+
+In this marvellous picture we come across something striking at every
+turn. How life-like is the halberdier looking over his shoulder; and the
+man who is inspecting his gun, just behind the figure in white; observe
+the wonderful effect of the laughing boy in the grey hat against the
+dark background. Even the pillar which serves as a background to the man
+with the helmet adds to the harmony of the whole.
+
+But here we meet with something peculiar! What is that quaint little
+girl doing among all those men?
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--HEAD OF A YOUNG MAN. (Unknown)
+
+In the Louvre]
+
+Numbers of critics have racked their brains about the meaning of
+different details. But if Rembrandt could have heard them, he would have
+answered with a laugh, "Don't you see that I only wanted this child as a
+focus for the light, and a contrast with all the downward lines and dark
+colours?"
+
+The man with the banner in the background, the dog running away, all
+these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and
+colour. There is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray
+a rare talent. This is a case in which the assertion, "Cut me a piece
+out of a picture and I will tell you if it is by an artist," could
+successfully be applied.
+
+Now, I hope my readers won't object to accompanying me a little further,
+and stopping with me before the "Syndics." There it hangs, the great
+simple canvas, quite different in character from the "Night Patrol."
+
+Everything here is dignified and stately. The whole picture is a
+glorious witness to the consummate knowledge the master possessed of
+expressing the individual soul in the human face. Here they sit, those
+old Dutch fathers, assembled in solemn conclave, debating about their
+trade, with the books on the table in front of them; and Rembrandt has
+painted these heads so true to life that in the course of years they
+have become like old friends; yes, old friends, though they lived
+hundreds of years before we were dreamt of.
+
+How long have I known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of
+his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing
+from under the high steeple-hat? The flesh tints in the face, whether
+catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless
+variety of shades, and the neutral greens and reds, greys and yellows,
+are put against each other in such a wonderful manner that an effect
+has been attained which strikes us dumb with admiration. The way in
+which he is made to stand out from the background is in itself
+marvellous, but just look at the man! how full of life and understanding
+is the look in those eyes. It is something quite unique, something
+Rembrandt himself has never surpassed.
+
+And then there are the other figures; the man who is leaning forward;
+the one sitting right in front of the book, his neighbour; even the
+fifth merchant on the right, with his servant behind him--one and all
+are full of life and light.
+
+The background is such as Rembrandt only, with his understanding of
+lines, could have devised. The wall and the panelling shut in the
+composition in such a way that one cannot possibly imagine it ever
+having been otherwise. And even this skilful touch is made subordinate
+to the warm red colour of the tablecloth, which lends the picture an
+additional depth.
+
+I don't know whether this picture was very much discussed by Rembrandt's
+contemporaries when it was finished. But to us, who have seen so much of
+the art of the great Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, these heads are
+the highest achievement of the art of painting.
+
+When I was in Madrid, where I was charmed by Velasquez' work, our party
+was one day walking through the broad streets of the capital. Passing a
+large, picturesque building, our attention was attracted by a gaudy
+poster informing us that an exhibition of the works of modern Spanish
+artists was being held within. Our curiosity being aroused, we entered,
+and found that in this country, where so many famous artists lived and
+worked, there are among the modern artists many studious, highly
+talented men, who serve their art with true love and devotion. But
+suddenly it seemed as if we had been carried by magic from Spain back to
+Amsterdam. We had come face to face with a copy of the "Syndics,"
+painted by a Spanish artist during a stay in Amsterdam.
+
+Was it national prejudice, or was it conviction? I don't know; but this
+copy spoke to us of a spirit of greater simplicity, of a truer
+conception of the nature and dignity of mankind than anything we had
+admired in the Prado. Yes; this picture even kills its own Dutch
+brothers. It makes Van der Helst look superficial, and Franz Hals
+unfinished and flat. So much thoroughness and depth combined with such
+freedom and grace of movement is not to be found anywhere else.
+
+These people have lived on the canvas for centuries, and they will
+outlive us all. And the man who achieved this masterpiece was at the
+time of its production a poor, struggling burgher living in an obscure
+corner of the town where his tercentenary festival was lately
+celebrated.
+
+
+III
+
+But this is not the place for the sad reflections which are awakened in
+our minds on examining the records of him whose name the world now
+glorifies and raises to the skies. Better to honour the great master
+who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. There
+is no need to-day to drag Rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past
+to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from
+the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to
+whom Holland proudly points as one of her own sons.
+
+On the contrary, never was Rembrandt's art valued so highly as it is
+now. Archives and documents are searched for details about his life and
+works. We want to know all about his life, and are anxious to share his
+inmost feelings in prosperity and adversity. The houses where he lived
+are marked down and bought by art-lovers. At the present time Rembrandt
+is in the zenith of his glory. Gold loses its value where his pictures
+are concerned. Fortunes are spent to secure the most insignificant of
+his works; people travel across continents to see them; and criticism,
+which for long years did little more than snarl at Rembrandt, has for
+nearly fifty years been dumb.
+
+It is remarkable that none of the great painters have, in the course of
+years, been subjected to so much criticism as Rembrandt. And
+notwithstanding all the things which have been said about the
+improbability of the scene, and the exaggeration of the dark background,
+the "Night Patrol" is now, as it ever was and ever will be, the "World's
+wonder," as our English neighbours say.
+
+During his lifetime there were people who condemned Rembrandt because he
+refused to follow in the footsteps of the old Italian painters, because
+he persisted in painting nature as he saw it.
+
+To us such a reproach seems strange, yet it is quite true. Even during
+the last years of Rembrandt's life a growing dissatisfaction with the
+existing ideas on art and literature had taken possession of the Dutch
+mind. People developed a morbid taste for everything classical; and when
+I read in the prose works and poems of these days the Latinised names
+and the constant allusions to Greek gods and goddesses and mythological
+personages, so strangely out of place under our northern sky, I am
+filled with disgust.
+
+It was fortunate, indeed, that Rembrandt always felt strong in his own
+conviction and only followed his own views. For many years after his
+death, even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of
+art critics raised objections against the dangerous theories of which
+his pictures were the expression. Again and again they attacked his
+technical treatment; none of them ever grasped its deeper, fuller
+meaning.
+
+Happily those days are far behind us. A great number of books and
+pamphlets have been published on Rembrandt during the last fifty years,
+and they are almost unanimous in their praise and admiration of the
+great master. The more liberal feelings of the modern world have
+achieved some victories in the realms of art as well as elsewhere. We
+moderns feel that the apparent shortcomings and exaggerations are
+nothing but the inevitable peculiarities attendant upon genius. And we
+even go so far that we would not have him be without a single one of
+them, for fear of losing the slightest trait in the character of the
+great man whose every movement roused our intellectual faculties.
+
+So Rembrandt has been raised in our days to the pinnacle of fame which
+is his by right; the festival of his tercentenary was acknowledged by
+the whole civilised world as the natural utterance of joy and pride of
+our small country in being able to count among its children the great
+Rembrandt.
+
+I finish,--"with the pen, but not with the heart!" For if I should go on
+until the inclination to add more to what I have written here should
+fail me, my readers would have tired of me long before I had tired of my
+subject. I am thinking of that rare gem, the portrait of Jan Six--of the
+Louvre, of Cassel, of Brunswick, of what not!
+
+May these pages convey to the reader the fact that I have always looked
+upon Rembrandt as the true type of an artist, free, untrammelled by
+traditions, genial in all he did; in short, a figure in whom all the
+great qualities of the old Republic of the United Provinces were
+concentrated and reflected.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: The "Trippenhuis" was used as a picture gallery before the
+Ryksmuseum was built. It was an old patrician family mansion belonging
+to the Trip family. Several members of this family filled important
+posts in the government of the old Republic of the United Provinces, and
+some were burgomasters of Amsterdam.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Arti et Amicitiæ" is a society of modern Dutch painters.
+Occasionally the members organise exhibitions of the work of
+contemporary countrymen or of foreign artists, and every year there is
+an exhibition of their own works. These shows are held in the society's
+own building in Amsterdam at the corner of the "Rokin" and "Spui."]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rembrandt
+
+Author: Josef Israels
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2007 [EBook #20607]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMBRANDT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chrome, Michael Ciesielski, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<!--
+<<a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"><b>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</b></a><br />
+<a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION</b></a><br />
+<a href="#REMBRANDT"><b>REMBRANDT</b></a><br />
+<a href="#II"><b>II</b></a><br />
+</p>
+-->
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3>MASTERPIECES<br />
+IN COLOUR</h3>
+<h3>EDITED BY<br />
+T. LEMAN HARE</h3>
+
+<table style='border:none;'>
+<tr><th colspan='2'><span class="smcap">In the Same Series</span></th></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Artist.</span>        </td><td>  <span class="smcap">Author.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>VELAZQUEZ.                </td><td><span class="smcap">S. L. Bensusan.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>REYNOLDS.                 </td><td><span class="smcap">S. L. Bensusan.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>TURNER.                   </td><td><span class="smcap">C. Lewis Hind.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>ROMNEY.                   </td><td><span class="smcap">C. Lewis Hind.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>GREUZE.                   </td><td><span class="smcap">Alys Eyke Macklin.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>BOTTICELLI.               </td><td><span class="smcap">Henry B. Binns.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>ROSSETTI.                 </td><td><span class="smcap">Lucien Pissarro.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>BELLINI.                  </td><td><span class="smcap">George Hay.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRA ANGELICO.             </td><td><span class="smcap">James Mason.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>LEIGHTON.                 </td><td><span class="smcap">A. Lys Baldry.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>REMBRANDT.                </td><td><span class="smcap">Josef Israels.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>WATTS.                    </td><td><span class="smcap">W. Loftus Hare.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>TITIAN.                   </td><td><span class="smcap">S. L. Bensusan.</span><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td>RAPHAEL.                  </td><td><span class="smcap">Paul G. Konody.</span><br /></td></tr>
+</table>
+<p class='centre'><i>Others in Preparation.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 510px;">
+<a href="images/image01.jpg"><img src="images/image01_thumb.jpg" width="510" height="658"
+ alt="PLATE 1--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN" title="PLATE 1--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN" /></a>
+<div class="caption"><strong>PLATE 1--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN</strong>
+<p>This portrait, painted about 1633, and one of the gems of the
+Wallace Collection, presents Susanna van Collen, wife of Jan
+Pellicorne, and her daughter.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1 style='font-weight: bold;'>Rembrandt</h1>
+<h2>BY JOSEF ISRAELS</h2>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT<br />
+REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 439px;">
+<img src="images/image02.png" width="439" height="406" alt="In Sempiternum" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='centre'>LONDON: T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK<br />
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.</p>
+
+<p class='centre'>The plates are printed by <span class="smcap">Bemrose Dalziel, Ltd.</span>, Watford</p>
+
+<p class='centre'>The text at the <span class="smcap">Ballantyne Press</span>, Edinburgh</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+
+
+<table id="loi" style="border: 0;">
+<tr><th class='y'>Plate</th><th /></tr>
+<tr><td>I. Suzanna Van Collen<br />
+    <span class="i2">From the Wallace Collection</span>   </td><td class='x'>              Frontispiece</td></tr>
+<tr><th /><th class='x'>Page</th></tr>
+<tr><td>II. A Portrait of Saskia<br />
+     <span class="i2">In the Brera, Milan</span>      </td><td class='x'>        14</td></tr>
+<tr><td>III. Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild<br />
+    <span class="i2">In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam</span> </td><td class='x'>  24</td></tr>
+<tr><td>IV. Portrait of an Old Man<br />
+    <span class="i2">In the Pitti Palace at Florence</span> </td><td class='x'>          34 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>V. The Company of Francis Banning Cocq<br />
+    <span class="i2">In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam</span>     </td><td class='x'>   40 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>VI. Portrait of a Young Man<br />
+    <span class="i2">In the Pitti Palace at Florence</span> </td><td class='x'>          50</td></tr>
+<tr><td>VII. Portrait of an Old Lady<br />
+    <span class="i2">From the National Gallery, London</span>   </td><td class='x'>   60</td></tr>
+<tr><td>VIII. Head of a Young Man<br />
+    <span class="i2">In the Louvre</span> </td><td class='x'>      70</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 381px;">
+<img src="images/image03.png" width="381" height="474" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+
+<p>While the world pays respectful tribute to Rembrandt the artist, it has
+been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small
+measure of reliable information concerning Rembrandt the man. The
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little
+concerned with personalities. A man was judged by his work which
+appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. There
+were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an
+artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life.
+Sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip,
+quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate
+generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great
+work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes
+as Rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the
+details of their sojourn unrecorded.</p>
+
+<p>Rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to
+have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no
+capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated
+in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much.
+Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his
+collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a
+fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and
+wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said
+about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was
+recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather
+up such fragments of biography as they could find.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare has put into Mark Antony's mouth the statement that "the
+evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with
+Rembrandt van Ryn. His first biographers seem to have no memory save
+for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts. They
+remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his studio
+was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could accommodate,
+that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling house, and that in
+short, he had every chance that would have led a good business man to
+prosperity and an old age removed from stress and strain. These facts
+seem to have aroused their ire. They have assailed his memory with
+invective that does not stop short at false statement. They have found
+in the greatest of all Dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take
+advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company
+promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose
+living.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 514px;">
+<a href="images/image04.jpg"><img src="images/image04_thumb.jpg" width="514" height="619" alt="PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA" title="PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA" /></a>
+<div class="caption"><strong>PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA</strong>
+<p>Rembrandt's portraits of his wife Saskia are distributed fairly equally
+throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the Brera in
+Milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced
+here. It is called "Portrait of a Woman" in the catalogue, but the
+features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to
+trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would
+have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as
+they imagined. Happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the
+painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men.
+Further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from
+Rembrandt's name; MM. Vosmaer and Michel have restored it as though it
+were a discoloured picture, and those who hail Rembrandt master may do
+so without mental reservation. His faults were very human ones and his
+merits leave them in the shade.</p>
+
+<p>Rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of Leyden, but it is not easy to
+name the precise year. Somewhere between 1604 and 1607 he started his
+troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are
+scanty. Doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of
+the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that
+were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed
+land. Perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for
+he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a
+picture lying ready for treatment. Even when he was a little boy the
+fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for
+the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon
+reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less
+than the labour involved in their acquisition. And yet his father was a
+wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his
+studies, and the best one can find to say about these early years is
+that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. In any
+case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. The boy who
+sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the
+horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a
+moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the
+school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if
+Rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way
+for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has
+found a home.</p>
+
+<p>His family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in 1620,
+when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been
+considerably less, he left Leyden University for the studio of a
+second-rate painter called Jan van Swanenburch. We have no authentic
+record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. He
+must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. At
+the end of three years he went to Lastman's studio in Amsterdam,
+returning thence to Leyden, where he took Gerard Dou as a pupil. A few
+years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory
+basis, he went to Amsterdam, and established himself there, because the
+Dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in
+spite of the seemingly endless war that Holland was waging with Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of "St. Paul in Prison" would seem to have been produced
+about 1627, but the painter's appearance before the public of Amsterdam
+in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned
+with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous
+"Anatomy Lesson," in 1631 or 1632. At this time he was living on the
+Bloemgracht. Rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of
+the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we
+remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old,
+and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to
+understand that Amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and
+greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. In a few weeks the entrance to
+the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their
+portraits, by pupils who brought 100 florins, no small sum in those days
+for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. It may
+be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity
+with the general public of Holland had waned, there was never any lack
+of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for
+admission to the studio.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater
+trial. Bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative
+genius; success tends to destroy it. Rembrandt did not remain unaffected
+by the quick response that Amsterdam made to his genius. His art
+remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession
+to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know
+what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so
+freely. The best use he made of changing circumstances was to become
+engaged to Saskia van Uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend
+Hendrick van Uylenborch, the art dealer of Amsterdam. Saskia, who was
+destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems
+to have been born in 1612, and to have become engaged to Rembrandt when
+she was twenty. The engagement followed very closely upon the patronage
+of Rembrandt by Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder, who instructed
+the artist to paint three pictures. There seemed no longer any need to
+hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage
+until 1634. Saskia is enshrined in many pictures. She is seen first as a
+young girl, then as a woman. As a bride, in the picture now at Dresden,
+she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his
+outstretched arm. Her expression here is rather shy, as if she
+deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued.
+This picture gave offence to Rembrandt's critics, who declared that it
+revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living&mdash;they
+could see nothing more in canvas than a story. Several portraits of
+Saskia remained to be painted. She would seem to have aged rapidly, for
+after marriage her days were not long in the land. She was only thirty
+when she died, and looked considerably older. </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 690px;">
+<a href="images/image05.jpg"><img src="images/image05_thumb.jpg" width="690" height="511" alt="PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS&#39; GUILD" title="PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS&#39; GUILD" />
+</a>
+<div class="caption"><strong>PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS' GUILD</strong><br />
+<p>This fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day
+in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. It is one of the finest examples of
+the master's portrait groups, and was painted in 1661.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the first years of his married life Rembrandt moved to the Nieuwe
+Doelstraat. For the time he had more commissions than he knew how to
+execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked,
+and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There
+can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years;
+he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for
+any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would
+be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great
+was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by
+Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid pearls
+that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his rash
+and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the
+prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would rush in where
+wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art collection, the
+purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed
+living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's estate. The artist's
+temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen who could not understand
+it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own
+judgment were more offensive still, and after 1636 there were fewer
+applications for portraits.</p>
+
+<p>In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van Loo,
+who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still more
+extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a
+case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have
+troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking
+more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he
+was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of raising children
+seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little
+Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had died soon after
+birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture remains on record
+with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the
+biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt was anything but
+a good son. A year later the well-beloved Saskia gave birth to the one
+child who survived the early years, the boy Titus. Then her health
+failed, and in 1642 she died, after eight years of married life that
+would seem to have been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous
+"Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning
+Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The
+work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter
+wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed
+equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose the picture!</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this
+fine work, Rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. He was then
+somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his
+mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward,
+his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of
+disappointment, pain, and care. Perhaps it would have been no bad thing
+for him if he could have gone with Saskia into the outer darkness. The
+world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared
+many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not
+redeem.</p>
+
+<p>Saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left
+to Rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child Titus,
+but Rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble
+about the legal side of the question. He did not even make an inventory
+of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to
+endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part
+of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. Perhaps
+the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer
+disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. It
+may be that the war with Spain was beginning to make people in
+comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the
+artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. His
+passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects
+could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the
+rank and file of Amsterdam's comfortable classes. To be sure, the
+Stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous
+"Circumcision" and the "Adoration of the Shepherds." Pupils continued to
+arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond Holland;
+but the public stayed away.</p>
+
+<p>Rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could,
+and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man
+who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no
+outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. Money ran through
+his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point
+out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale
+of distress.</p>
+
+<p>Between 1642, when Saskia died, and 1649, it is not easy to follow the
+progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his
+difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. His
+connection with Hendrickje Stoffels would seem to have started about
+1649, and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen
+years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the
+painter's mistress. Some have endeavoured to prove, without any
+evidence, that he married her, but this concession to Mrs. Grundy seems
+a little beside the mark. The relations between the pair were a matter
+for their own consideration, and it is clear that Hendrickje came to the
+painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and
+faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of
+thirty-six.</p>
+
+<p>She bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously
+enough, her position in the house was accepted by young Titus Rembrandt,
+who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her,
+to deal in pictures and works of art&mdash;a not very successful attempt to
+support the establishment in comfort.</p>
+
+<p>In the year when Hendrickje joined Rembrandt, he could no longer pay
+instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the Joden
+Breestraat. About the following year he began to sell property, hoping
+against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. Three
+years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. In 1656 a
+fresh guardian was appointed for Titus, to whom his father transferred
+some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. The
+year 1657 saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of
+pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no
+more than 5000 florins. A year later his store of pictures came under
+the hammer, and in 1660, Hendrickje and Titus started their plucky
+attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore
+some small part of the family fortune.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;">
+<a href="images/image06.jpg"><img src="images/image06_thumb.jpg" width="506" height="669" alt="PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN" title="PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN" />
+</a><div class="caption"><b>PLATE IV.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN</b>
+<p>Rembrandt painted very many portraits of men and women whose identity
+cannot be traced, and it is probable that the original of this striking
+portrait in the Pitti Palace at Florence was unknown to many of the
+painter's contemporaries. This is one of Rembrandt's late works, and is
+said to have been painted about 1658.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>For a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned.
+One of Rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the
+"Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," and this is one of the last works of
+importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to
+fail. To understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is
+necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he
+produced between 1628 and 1661. The drawings may be disregarded in this
+connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in
+existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are
+allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must
+have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. When he was passing from
+middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not
+surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer.</p>
+
+<p>One might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with
+Rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. One
+year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the
+faithful Hendrickje died. A portrait of her, one of the last of the
+master's works, may be seen in Berlin. The face is a charming and
+sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that
+makes the mere question of the Church's participation in her relations
+with Rembrandt a very small affair indeed.</p>
+
+<p>In the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the
+great silence. A few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old
+friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as
+they might. With failing sight and health he moved to the Lauriergracht,
+and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. The lawyers made merry
+with the various suits. Some had been instituted to recover money that
+the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the
+creditors' right to Saskia's estate. In 1665 Titus received the balance
+that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle
+what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1668, when he was about twenty-seven years old, Titus
+married his cousin Magdellena, and this little celebration may be
+supposed to have cheered the elder Rembrandt a little, but his pleasure
+was brief, for the young bridegroom died in September of the same year,
+and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the immortals had completed their task, there was nothing
+left for them to do; they had broken the old painter's health and his
+heart, they had reduced him to poverty. So they gave him half a year to
+digest their gifts, and then some word of pity seems to have entered
+into their councils, and one of the greatest painters the world has seen
+was set free from the intolerable burden of life. From certain documents
+still extant we learn that he was buried at the expense of thirteen
+florins. He has left to the world some five or six hundred pictures that
+are admitted to be genuine, together with the etchings and drawings to
+which reference has been made. He is to be seen in many galleries in the
+Old World and the New, for he painted his own portrait more than a score
+of times. Saskia, too, may be seen in several galleries and Hendrickje
+has not been forgotten.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 643px;">
+<a href="images/image07.jpg"><img src="images/image07_thumb.jpg" width="643" height="507" alt="PLATE V.--THE COMPANY OF FRANCIS BANNING COCQ" title="PLATE V.--THE COMPANY OF FRANCIS BANNING COCQ" />
+</a><div class="caption"><b>PLATE V.&mdash;THE COMPANY OF FRANCIS BANNING COCQ</b>
+<p>Generally known as the "Night Watch." This famous picture, now to be
+seen in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam, is the best discussed of all the
+master's works. It has been pointed out that it is in reality a day
+scene although it is known to most people as the "Night Watch." The
+picture was painted in 1642.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>There is no doubt that many of Rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted;
+but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. His pictures may
+be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed,
+too, among private galleries. Rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all
+countries. We know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in
+Holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time,
+that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a
+little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. Now, in the years
+when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are
+silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of Velazquez and Titian.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="REMBRANDT" id="REMBRANDT"></a>REMBRANDT</h2>
+
+<h3>AN APPRECIATION OF THE PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM</h3>
+
+
+<p>Will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees,
+heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often?</p>
+
+<p>I feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of
+the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different
+toasts, I will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight
+in the festive gathering. I touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and I
+speak as my heart prompts me. It is not very important or interesting,
+but I am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given.</p>
+
+<p>In this frame of mind I am contributing my little share to the pile of
+written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of
+the great painter.</p>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Many years ago I went to Amsterdam as an art student, to be trained
+under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter Kruseman. Very
+soon I was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration
+the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the
+time.</p>
+
+<p>The pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the
+draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a
+background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, I expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these
+portraits, the master refused my request. "No," he said; "if you want to
+copy, go to the museum in the 'Trippenhuis.'"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>I dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me.
+Having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book
+to me. I failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned
+scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. To my
+untrained eyes the exhibition in "Arti"<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> seemed infinitely more
+beautiful; and Pieneman, Gallait, Calame, and Koekoek especially excited
+my admiration.</p>
+
+<p>I was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my
+fellow-students, but I had not yet gained the experience and practice,
+which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but
+highly artistic qualities of the old Dutch masters. I maintain that
+however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old
+Dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become
+thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it.
+In order to be able to sound the real character and depth of
+manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and
+developed.</p>
+
+<p>It was long before I could summon up sufficient courage to enter this
+Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started
+on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as
+in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and
+many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist
+in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. I realised that my
+chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of
+the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures.</p>
+
+<p>Having learned to look upon art from this point of view, I entered the
+old "Trippenhuis" with pleasure. Little by little the beauty and truth
+of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. I perceived that their
+simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in
+which they were treated. The artists were geniuses, and the world around
+them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing little of art, I chose for my first copy a small canvas, a
+"Hermit" by Gerard Dou, not understanding that, though small, it might
+contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. I
+had to work it over and over again, for I could not get any shape in the
+thick, sticky paint. Then I tried a head by Van der Helst, and succeeded
+a little better. </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 508px;">
+<a href="images/image08.jpg"><img src="images/image08_thumb.jpg" width="508" height="622" alt="PLATE VI.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN" title="PLATE VI.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN" />
+</a><div class="caption"><b>PLATE VI.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN</b>
+
+<p>This portrait may be seen to-day in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is
+said to be one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about
+1635.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>At last I stopped before one of the heads in the "Syndics of the Cloth
+Merchants' Guild." The man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey
+hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. I felt that there was
+something in the portrait's beauty I could grasp and reproduce, though I
+saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from
+what I had attempted hitherto. However, the desire to reproduce this
+breadth of execution tempted me so much that I resolved to try my hand
+at it. I forget now what the copy looked like; I only remember that for
+years it hung on my studio wall.</p>
+
+<p>So I tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the
+different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "Night Patrol"
+and the "Syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but
+what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique Rembrandt.
+In his work I found something which all the others lacked. Freedom and
+exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and
+forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio.</p>
+
+<p>Although Frans Hals impressed me more than any other painter with the
+power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by
+Rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects.</p>
+
+<p>When I had looked at Rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, I used
+to go down to the ground floor in the "Trippenhuis" to the print
+cabinet. Here I found his etchings beautifully arranged. It was a
+pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table
+covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio
+and look at the gems they contained at leisure.</p>
+
+<p>I often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two
+hundred and forty masterpieces. The conservator never ceased urging me
+to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to
+compare them. How astonished I was to find in the painter who, with
+mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "Night Patrol," an
+accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a
+great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of
+the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper.</p>
+
+<p>Still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in
+these etchings. It was rather the singular inventive power shown in the
+different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the
+almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. The
+artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it
+found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate
+handling of the needle.</p>
+
+<p>Many Biblical subjects are represented in the Amsterdam collection; they
+are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in
+spite of their seeming incongruity. The conception is so highly
+original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding,
+that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted
+beside them.</p>
+
+<p>Among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike
+heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked
+at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the
+portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving.
+Motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every
+curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. Each line has a meaning;
+not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole.</p>
+
+<p>Hokusai, the Japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old
+that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke
+of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. That is
+exactly what Rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he
+realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old Japanese; it is
+one of his earliest etchings.</p>
+
+<p>I re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful
+old Jewish beggars. They were types that were to be found by the score
+in the Amsterdam of those days, and Rembrandt delighted to draw them.
+One is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the
+master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which
+his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at.</p>
+
+<p>When I had looked enough at the etchings, I used to go home through the
+town, and it seemed to me as if I were meeting the very people I had
+just seen in the engravings. As I went through the "Hoog Straat" and
+"St. Anthony's Breestraat" to the "Joden Breestraat," where I lived a
+few doors from the famous house where Rembrandt dwelt and worked so
+long, I saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; I saw the vivid
+Hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women;
+the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses,
+the people, the sky. It was all Rembrandt&mdash;all Rembrandtesque. A great
+deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which I have
+been writing, yet, even now, whenever I pass through them I seem to see
+the colours, and the kind of people Rembrandt shows us in his works.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime I had found a third manifestation of Rembrandt's talent,
+viz., his drawings. To a young painter, who himself was still groping in
+the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were
+exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus.</p>
+
+<p>Less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before I could
+properly appreciate them, but when I understood what I firmly believe
+still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting
+them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines I felt their
+true meaning. They were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings;
+emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. They have been
+thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand
+that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least
+sensation. When I looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by
+all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a
+seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully,
+they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a
+just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. The greater
+compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes&mdash;all
+are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling. </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;">
+<a href="images/image09.jpg"><img src="images/image09_thumb.jpg" width="506" height="618" alt="PLATE VII.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY" title="PLATE VII.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY" />
+</a><div class="caption"><b>PLATE VII.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY</b>
+<p>This famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our National Gallery.
+It is on canvas 4 ft. 2&frac34; in. by 3 ft. 2 in.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed
+us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however,
+being by contemporaries who had already become famous. Among them was
+one drawing by Rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar
+effect it produced in this collection. The scene represented on the old
+smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in
+composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the
+other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. Here was the
+master, towering above all.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I saw Rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and
+could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or
+etching needle. Whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a
+corner of old Amsterdam&mdash;out of everything he made the most beautiful
+drawings. His pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully na&iuml;ve. His
+nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared
+paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt,
+entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of
+reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or
+June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's
+washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the
+canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>And the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that
+one can never look too long at them. All his work is done with a
+light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once
+the idea of painful study and exertion.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>What do I think of the master now, after so many years?</p>
+
+<p>Come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression
+of Rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "The Night Patrol."</p>
+
+<p>Our way leads us now to the Ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the newly
+built "Rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to obtain a
+full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the struggle it
+cost to erect this temple of art.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade,
+which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies.
+Then, suddenly, two men seem to step out from the group. The one is
+dressed in sombre-coloured clothes, whilst the other is resplendent in
+white. That is Rembrandt all over, not afraid of putting the light in
+bold contrast against the dark. So as to maintain the harmony between
+the two he makes the dark man lift his hand as if he were pointing at
+something, and in doing so, he casts a softening shadow on his brilliant
+companion. Genius finds a way where ordinary mortals are at a loss how
+to help themselves. Clearly these men are in earnest conversation with
+each other, and it is quite evident that they are the leaders of the
+company.</p>
+
+<p>But when everything was put on the canvas that he intended to put there,
+the master stood in front of it and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>To him these two leaders did not stand out sufficiently from the rest.
+So he took up his palette again, and again he dipped his broadest
+brushes deep in paint and with a few mighty strokes he transformed these
+two figures; a little more depth here, some more light there. He tried
+every means to give the scene more depth, and a fuller meaning. Then he
+saw that it was all right and left it.</p>
+
+<p>The likeness of his patrons was, perhaps, not very exact and most likely
+some murmurs were raised at the want of minutely finished detail; but he
+did not heed such matters. To him the main point was to make his figures
+live and breathe and move; and see how he succeeded! From the plumes of
+their hats to the soles of their feet everything is living, tangible.
+How full of energy and character are their heads! Their dress, the steel
+gorget, the boots of the man in white; everything bears witness to the
+wonderful power of the master.</p>
+
+<p>And look at the man in black, with his red bandolier, his gloves, and
+his stick. This does not strike one as anything out of the common,
+because the composition is so true, so perfectly natural and simple. I
+cannot remember having seen a single picture in which the peculiar style
+and picturesqueness of those days is so vividly expressed, as in the
+figures of these two men calmly walking along on the giant canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us turn to the right and have a look at the perspiring drummer.
+His pock-marked face, overshadowed by a frayed hat, is of the true
+Falstaff type. The swollen nose, the thick-lipped mouth, every detail is
+carried out with the daring of the true artist which characterises all
+the master's work. Look at him, drumming away as if he wanted to make it
+known that he himself is one of the most magnificent specimens of the
+work of the genius whom men call Rembrandt.</p>
+
+<p>On looking at this man I can understand why Gerard de Lairesse exclaimed
+in his great book on painting: "In Rembrandt's pictures the paint is
+running down the panel like mud!" But it was only his conscientious
+narrow-mindedness which made him say it. Genius never fails to get into
+conflict with narrow thought.</p>
+
+<p>But now let us turn our attention to the left-hand corner. There we see
+that pithy soldier all in red. Rembrandt, with his intuitive knowledge
+of chiaroscuro, was not afraid of painting a figure all in red. He knew
+that the play of light and shade on the colour would help him out. Here
+part of the red is toned down by a beautiful soft tint, which makes the
+whole figure blend harmoniously with the greyish-green of the others.
+This man in red, too, has been treated in the same masterly manner of
+which I spoke above. If one looks at him attentively, it seems as if the
+man, who apparently might step out of the canvas at any rate, had been
+painted with one powerful sweep of the brush. How firm is the treatment
+of the hand loading the gun; how true the shadows on the red hat and
+jerkin. There the figure stands, alert, living, full of movement, rich
+in colour.</p>
+
+<p>In this marvellous picture we come across something striking at every
+turn. How life-like is the halberdier looking over his shoulder; and the
+man who is inspecting his gun, just behind the figure in white; observe
+the wonderful effect of the laughing boy in the grey hat against the
+dark background. Even the pillar which serves as a background to the man
+with the helmet adds to the harmony of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>But here we meet with something peculiar! What is that quaint little
+girl doing among all those men? </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 502px;">
+<img src="images/image10_thumb.jpg" width="502" height="617" alt="PLATE VIII.&mdash;HEAD OF A YOUNG MAN. (Unknown)" title="PLATE VIII.&mdash;HEAD OF A YOUNG MAN. (Unknown)" />
+<div class="caption"><b>PLATE VIII.&mdash;HEAD OF A YOUNG MAN. (Unknown)</b>
+
+<p>In the Louvre</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Numbers of critics have racked their brains about the meaning of
+different details. But if Rembrandt could have heard them, he would have
+answered with a laugh, "Don't you see that I only wanted this child as a
+focus for the light, and a contrast with all the downward lines and dark
+colours?"</p>
+
+<p>The man with the banner in the background, the dog running away, all
+these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and
+colour. There is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray
+a rare talent. This is a case in which the assertion, "Cut me a piece
+out of a picture and I will tell you if it is by an artist," could
+successfully be applied.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I hope my readers won't object to accompanying me a little further,
+and stopping with me before the "Syndics." There it hangs, the great
+simple canvas, quite different in character from the "Night Patrol."</p>
+
+<p>Everything here is dignified and stately. The whole picture is a
+glorious witness to the consummate knowledge the master possessed of
+expressing the individual soul in the human face. Here they sit, those
+old Dutch fathers, assembled in solemn conclave, debating about their
+trade, with the books on the table in front of them; and Rembrandt has
+painted these heads so true to life that in the course of years they
+have become like old friends; yes, old friends, though they lived
+hundreds of years before we were dreamt of.</p>
+
+<p>How long have I known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of
+his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing
+from under the high steeple-hat? The flesh tints in the face, whether
+catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless
+variety of shades, and the neutral greens and reds, greys and yellows,
+are put against each other in such a wonderful manner that an effect
+has been attained which strikes us dumb with admiration. The way in
+which he is made to stand out from the background is in itself
+marvellous, but just look at the man! how full of life and understanding
+is the look in those eyes. It is something quite unique, something
+Rembrandt himself has never surpassed.</p>
+
+<p>And then there are the other figures; the man who is leaning forward;
+the one sitting right in front of the book, his neighbour; even the
+fifth merchant on the right, with his servant behind him&mdash;one and all
+are full of life and light.</p>
+
+<p>The background is such as Rembrandt only, with his understanding of
+lines, could have devised. The wall and the panelling shut in the
+composition in such a way that one cannot possibly imagine it ever
+having been otherwise. And even this skilful touch is made subordinate
+to the warm red colour of the tablecloth, which lends the picture an
+additional depth.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know whether this picture was very much discussed by Rembrandt's
+contemporaries when it was finished. But to us, who have seen so much of
+the art of the great Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, these heads are
+the highest achievement of the art of painting.</p>
+
+<p>When I was in Madrid, where I was charmed by Velasquez' work, our party
+was one day walking through the broad streets of the capital. Passing a
+large, picturesque building, our attention was attracted by a gaudy
+poster informing us that an exhibition of the works of modern Spanish
+artists was being held within. Our curiosity being aroused, we entered,
+and found that in this country, where so many famous artists lived and
+worked, there are among the modern artists many studious, highly
+talented men, who serve their art with true love and devotion. But
+suddenly it seemed as if we had been carried by magic from Spain back to
+Amsterdam. We had come face to face with a copy of the "Syndics,"
+painted by a Spanish artist during a stay in Amsterdam.</p>
+
+<p>Was it national prejudice, or was it conviction? I don't know; but this
+copy spoke to us of a spirit of greater simplicity, of a truer
+conception of the nature and dignity of mankind than anything we had
+admired in the Prado. Yes; this picture even kills its own Dutch
+brothers. It makes Van der Helst look superficial, and Franz Hals
+unfinished and flat. So much thoroughness and depth combined with such
+freedom and grace of movement is not to be found anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>These people have lived on the canvas for centuries, and they will
+outlive us all. And the man who achieved this masterpiece was at the
+time of its production a poor, struggling burgher living in an obscure
+corner of the town where his tercentenary festival was lately
+celebrated.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>But this is not the place for the sad reflections which are awakened in
+our minds on examining the records of him whose name the world now
+glorifies and raises to the skies. Better to honour the great master
+who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. There
+is no need to-day to drag Rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past
+to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from
+the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to
+whom Holland proudly points as one of her own sons.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, never was Rembrandt's art valued so highly as it is
+now. Archives and documents are searched for details about his life and
+works. We want to know all about his life, and are anxious to share his
+inmost feelings in prosperity and adversity. The houses where he lived
+are marked down and bought by art-lovers. At the present time Rembrandt
+is in the zenith of his glory. Gold loses its value where his pictures
+are concerned. Fortunes are spent to secure the most insignificant of
+his works; people travel across continents to see them; and criticism,
+which for long years did little more than snarl at Rembrandt, has for
+nearly fifty years been dumb.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that none of the great painters have, in the course of
+years, been subjected to so much criticism as Rembrandt. And
+notwithstanding all the things which have been said about the
+improbability of the scene, and the exaggeration of the dark background,
+the "Night Patrol" is now, as it ever was and ever will be, the "World's
+wonder," as our English neighbours say.</p>
+
+<p>During his lifetime there were people who condemned Rembrandt because he
+refused to follow in the footsteps of the old Italian painters, because
+he persisted in painting nature as he saw it.</p>
+
+<p>To us such a reproach seems strange, yet it is quite true. Even during
+the last years of Rembrandt's life a growing dissatisfaction with the
+existing ideas on art and literature had taken possession of the Dutch
+mind. People developed a morbid taste for everything classical; and when
+I read in the prose works and poems of these days the Latinised names
+and the constant allusions to Greek gods and goddesses and mythological
+personages, so strangely out of place under our northern sky, I am
+filled with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunate, indeed, that Rembrandt always felt strong in his own
+conviction and only followed his own views. For many years after his
+death, even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of
+art critics raised objections against the dangerous theories of which
+his pictures were the expression. Again and again they attacked his
+technical treatment; none of them ever grasped its deeper, fuller
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Happily those days are far behind us. A great number of books and
+pamphlets have been published on Rembrandt during the last fifty years,
+and they are almost unanimous in their praise and admiration of the
+great master. The more liberal feelings of the modern world have
+achieved some victories in the realms of art as well as elsewhere. We
+moderns feel that the apparent shortcomings and exaggerations are
+nothing but the inevitable peculiarities attendant upon genius. And we
+even go so far that we would not have him be without a single one of
+them, for fear of losing the slightest trait in the character of the
+great man whose every movement roused our intellectual faculties.</p>
+
+<p>So Rembrandt has been raised in our days to the pinnacle of fame which
+is his by right; the festival of his tercentenary was acknowledged by
+the whole civilised world as the natural utterance of joy and pride of
+our small country in being able to count among its children the great
+Rembrandt.</p>
+
+<p>I finish,&mdash;"with the pen, but not with the heart!" For if I should go on
+until the inclination to add more to what I have written here should
+fail me, my readers would have tired of me long before I had tired of my
+subject. I am thinking of that rare gem, the portrait of Jan Six&mdash;of the
+Louvre, of Cassel, of Brunswick, of what not!</p>
+
+<p>May these pages convey to the reader the fact that I have always looked
+upon Rembrandt as the true type of an artist, free, untrammelled by
+traditions, genial in all he did; in short, a figure in whom all the
+great qualities of the old Republic of the United Provinces were
+concentrated and reflected.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<h4>Footnotes</h4>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The "Trippenhuis" was used as a picture gallery before the
+Ryksmuseum was built. It was an old patrician family mansion belonging
+to the Trip family. Several members of this family filled important
+posts in the government of the old Republic of the United Provinces, and
+some were burgomasters of Amsterdam.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Arti et Amiciti&aelig;" is a society of modern Dutch painters.
+Occasionally the members organise exhibitions of the work of
+contemporary countrymen or of foreign artists, and every year there is
+an exhibition of their own works. These shows are held in the society's
+own building in Amsterdam at the corner of the "Rokin" and "Spui."</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rembrandt
+
+Author: Josef Israels
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2007 [EBook #20607]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMBRANDT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chrome, Michael Ciesielski, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
+
+EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE
+
+In the Same Series
+
+Artist.               Author.
+VELAZQUEZ.            S. L. Bensusan.
+REYNOLDS.             S. L. Bensusan.
+TURNER.               C. Lewis Hind.
+ROMNEY.               C. Lewis Hind.
+GREUZE.               Alys Eyke Macklin.
+BOTTICELLI.           Henry B. Binns.
+ROSSETTI.             Lucien Pissarro.
+BELLINI.              George Hay.
+FRA ANGELICO.         James Mason.
+LEIGHTON.             A. Lys Baldry.
+REMBRANDT.            Josef Israels.
+WATTS.                W. Loftus Hare.
+TITIAN.               S. L. Bensusan.
+RAPHAEL.              Paul G. Konody.
+
+_Others in Preparation._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE 1.--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN
+
+This portrait, painted about 1633, and one of the gems of the Wallace
+Collection, presents Susanna van Collen, wife of Jan Pellicorne, and her
+daughter.]
+
+
+
+REMBRANDT
+
+BY JOSEF ISRAELS
+
+ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+
+The plates are printed by Bemrose Dalziel, Ltd., Watford
+
+The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Plate
+I. Suzanna Van Collen                 Frontispiece
+    From the Wallace Collection
+
+                                                Page
+II. A Portrait of Saskia                          14
+    In the Brera, Milan
+
+III. Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild        24
+    In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam
+
+IV. Portrait of an Old Man                        34
+    In the Pitti Palace at Florence
+
+V. The Company of Francis Banning Cocq            40
+    In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam
+
+VI. Portrait of a Young Man                       50
+    In the Pitti Palace at Florence
+
+VII. Portrait of an Old Lady                      60
+    From the National Gallery, London
+
+VIII. Head of a Young Man                         70
+    In the Louvre
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+While the world pays respectful tribute to Rembrandt the artist, it has
+been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small
+measure of reliable information concerning Rembrandt the man. The
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little
+concerned with personalities. A man was judged by his work which
+appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. There
+were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an
+artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life.
+Sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip,
+quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate
+generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great
+work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes
+as Rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the
+details of their sojourn unrecorded.
+
+Rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to
+have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no
+capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated
+in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much.
+Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his
+collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a
+fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and
+wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said
+about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was
+recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather
+up such fragments of biography as they could find.
+
+Shakespeare has put into Mark Antony's mouth the statement that "the
+evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with
+Rembrandt van Ryn. His first biographers seem to have no memory save
+for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts. They
+remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his studio
+was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could accommodate,
+that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling house, and that in
+short, he had every chance that would have led a good business man to
+prosperity and an old age removed from stress and strain. These facts
+seem to have aroused their ire. They have assailed his memory with
+invective that does not stop short at false statement. They have found
+in the greatest of all Dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take
+advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company
+promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose
+living.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA
+
+Rembrandt's portraits of his wife Saskia are distributed fairly equally
+throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the Brera in
+Milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced
+here. It is called "Portrait of a Woman" in the catalogue, but the
+features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.]
+
+Alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to
+trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would
+have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as
+they imagined. Happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the
+painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men.
+Further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from
+Rembrandt's name; MM. Vosmaer and Michel have restored it as though it
+were a discoloured picture, and those who hail Rembrandt master may do
+so without mental reservation. His faults were very human ones and his
+merits leave them in the shade.
+
+Rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of Leyden, but it is not easy to
+name the precise year. Somewhere between 1604 and 1607 he started his
+troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are
+scanty. Doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of
+the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that
+were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed
+land. Perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for
+he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a
+picture lying ready for treatment. Even when he was a little boy the
+fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for
+the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon
+reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less
+than the labour involved in their acquisition. And yet his father was a
+wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his
+studies, and the best one can find to say about these early years is
+that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. In any
+case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. The boy who
+sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the
+horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a
+moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the
+school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if
+Rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way
+for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has
+found a home.
+
+His family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in 1620,
+when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been
+considerably less, he left Leyden University for the studio of a
+second-rate painter called Jan van Swanenburch. We have no authentic
+record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. He
+must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. At
+the end of three years he went to Lastman's studio in Amsterdam,
+returning thence to Leyden, where he took Gerard Dou as a pupil. A few
+years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory
+basis, he went to Amsterdam, and established himself there, because the
+Dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in
+spite of the seemingly endless war that Holland was waging with Spain.
+
+The picture of "St. Paul in Prison" would seem to have been produced
+about 1627, but the painter's appearance before the public of Amsterdam
+in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned
+with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous
+"Anatomy Lesson," in 1631 or 1632. At this time he was living on the
+Bloemgracht. Rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of
+the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we
+remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old,
+and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to
+understand that Amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and
+greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. In a few weeks the entrance to
+the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their
+portraits, by pupils who brought 100 florins, no small sum in those days
+for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. It may
+be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity
+with the general public of Holland had waned, there was never any lack
+of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for
+admission to the studio.
+
+Many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater
+trial. Bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative
+genius; success tends to destroy it. Rembrandt did not remain unaffected
+by the quick response that Amsterdam made to his genius. His art
+remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession
+to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know
+what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so
+freely. The best use he made of changing circumstances was to become
+engaged to Saskia van Uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend
+Hendrick van Uylenborch, the art dealer of Amsterdam. Saskia, who was
+destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems
+to have been born in 1612, and to have become engaged to Rembrandt when
+she was twenty. The engagement followed very closely upon the patronage
+of Rembrandt by Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder, who instructed
+the artist to paint three pictures. There seemed no longer any need to
+hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage
+until 1634. Saskia is enshrined in many pictures. She is seen first as a
+young girl, then as a woman. As a bride, in the picture now at Dresden,
+she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his
+outstretched arm. Her expression here is rather shy, as if she
+deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued.
+This picture gave offence to Rembrandt's critics, who declared that it
+revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living--they
+could see nothing more in canvas than a story. Several portraits of
+Saskia remained to be painted. She would seem to have aged rapidly, for
+after marriage her days were not long in the land. She was only thirty
+when she died, and looked considerably older.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS' GUILD
+
+This fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day
+in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. It is one of the finest examples of
+the master's portrait groups, and was painted in 1661.]
+
+In the first years of his married life Rembrandt moved to the Nieuwe
+Doelstraat. For the time he had more commissions than he knew how to
+execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked,
+and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There
+can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years;
+he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for
+any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would
+be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great
+was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by
+Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid pearls
+that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his rash
+and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the
+prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would rush in where
+wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art collection, the
+purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed
+living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's estate. The artist's
+temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen who could not understand
+it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own
+judgment were more offensive still, and after 1636 there were fewer
+applications for portraits.
+
+In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van Loo,
+who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still more
+extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a
+case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have
+troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking
+more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he
+was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of raising children
+seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little
+Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had died soon after
+birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture remains on record
+with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the
+biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt was anything but
+a good son. A year later the well-beloved Saskia gave birth to the one
+child who survived the early years, the boy Titus. Then her health
+failed, and in 1642 she died, after eight years of married life that
+would seem to have been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous
+"Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning
+Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The
+work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter
+wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed
+equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose the picture!
+
+It may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this
+fine work, Rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. He was then
+somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his
+mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward,
+his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of
+disappointment, pain, and care. Perhaps it would have been no bad thing
+for him if he could have gone with Saskia into the outer darkness. The
+world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared
+many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not
+redeem.
+
+Saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left
+to Rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child Titus,
+but Rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble
+about the legal side of the question. He did not even make an inventory
+of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to
+endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part
+of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. Perhaps
+the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer
+disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. It
+may be that the war with Spain was beginning to make people in
+comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the
+artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. His
+passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects
+could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the
+rank and file of Amsterdam's comfortable classes. To be sure, the
+Stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous
+"Circumcision" and the "Adoration of the Shepherds." Pupils continued to
+arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond Holland;
+but the public stayed away.
+
+Rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could,
+and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man
+who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no
+outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. Money ran through
+his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point
+out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale
+of distress.
+
+Between 1642, when Saskia died, and 1649, it is not easy to follow the
+progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his
+difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. His
+connection with Hendrickje Stoffels would seem to have started about
+1649, and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen
+years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the
+painter's mistress. Some have endeavoured to prove, without any
+evidence, that he married her, but this concession to Mrs. Grundy seems
+a little beside the mark. The relations between the pair were a matter
+for their own consideration, and it is clear that Hendrickje came to the
+painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and
+faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of
+thirty-six.
+
+She bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously
+enough, her position in the house was accepted by young Titus Rembrandt,
+who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her,
+to deal in pictures and works of art--a not very successful attempt to
+support the establishment in comfort.
+
+In the year when Hendrickje joined Rembrandt, he could no longer pay
+instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the Joden
+Breestraat. About the following year he began to sell property, hoping
+against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. Three
+years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. In 1656 a
+fresh guardian was appointed for Titus, to whom his father transferred
+some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. The
+year 1657 saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of
+pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no
+more than 5000 florins. A year later his store of pictures came under
+the hammer, and in 1660, Hendrickje and Titus started their plucky
+attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore
+some small part of the family fortune.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN
+
+Rembrandt painted very many portraits of men and women whose identity
+cannot be traced, and it is probable that the original of this striking
+portrait in the Pitti Palace at Florence was unknown to many of the
+painter's contemporaries. This is one of Rembrandt's late works, and is
+said to have been painted about 1658.]
+
+For a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned.
+One of Rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the
+"Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," and this is one of the last works of
+importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to
+fail. To understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is
+necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he
+produced between 1628 and 1661. The drawings may be disregarded in this
+connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in
+existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are
+allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must
+have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. When he was passing from
+middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not
+surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer.
+
+One might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with
+Rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. One
+year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the
+faithful Hendrickje died. A portrait of her, one of the last of the
+master's works, may be seen in Berlin. The face is a charming and
+sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that
+makes the mere question of the Church's participation in her relations
+with Rembrandt a very small affair indeed.
+
+In the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the
+great silence. A few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old
+friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as
+they might. With failing sight and health he moved to the Lauriergracht,
+and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. The lawyers made merry
+with the various suits. Some had been instituted to recover money that
+the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the
+creditors' right to Saskia's estate. In 1665 Titus received the balance
+that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle
+what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound.
+
+In the summer of 1668, when he was about twenty-seven years old, Titus
+married his cousin Magdellena, and this little celebration may be
+supposed to have cheered the elder Rembrandt a little, but his pleasure
+was brief, for the young bridegroom died in September of the same year,
+and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born.
+
+By this time the immortals had completed their task, there was nothing
+left for them to do; they had broken the old painter's health and his
+heart, they had reduced him to poverty. So they gave him half a year to
+digest their gifts, and then some word of pity seems to have entered
+into their councils, and one of the greatest painters the world has seen
+was set free from the intolerable burden of life. From certain documents
+still extant we learn that he was buried at the expense of thirteen
+florins. He has left to the world some five or six hundred pictures that
+are admitted to be genuine, together with the etchings and drawings to
+which reference has been made. He is to be seen in many galleries in the
+Old World and the New, for he painted his own portrait more than a score
+of times. Saskia, too, may be seen in several galleries and Hendrickje
+has not been forgotten.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE COMPANY OF FRANCIS BANNING COCQ
+
+Generally known as the "Night Watch." This famous picture, now to be
+seen in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam, is the best discussed of all the
+master's works. It has been pointed out that it is in reality a day
+scene although it is known to most people as the "Night Watch." The
+picture was painted in 1642.]
+
+There is no doubt that many of Rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted;
+but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. His pictures may
+be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed,
+too, among private galleries. Rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all
+countries. We know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in
+Holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time,
+that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a
+little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. Now, in the years
+when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are
+silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of Velazquez and Titian.
+
+
+
+
+REMBRANDT
+
+AN APPRECIATION OF THE PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM
+
+
+Will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees,
+heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often?
+
+I feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of
+the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different
+toasts, I will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight
+in the festive gathering. I touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and I
+speak as my heart prompts me. It is not very important or interesting,
+but I am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given.
+
+In this frame of mind I am contributing my little share to the pile of
+written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of
+the great painter.
+
+
+I
+
+Many years ago I went to Amsterdam as an art student, to be trained
+under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter Kruseman. Very
+soon I was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration
+the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the
+time.
+
+The pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the
+draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a
+background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely.
+
+When, however, I expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these
+portraits, the master refused my request. "No," he said; "if you want to
+copy, go to the museum in the 'Trippenhuis.'"[1]
+
+I dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me.
+Having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book
+to me. I failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned
+scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. To my
+untrained eyes the exhibition in "Arti"[2] seemed infinitely more
+beautiful; and Pieneman, Gallait, Calame, and Koekoek especially excited
+my admiration.
+
+I was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my
+fellow-students, but I had not yet gained the experience and practice,
+which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but
+highly artistic qualities of the old Dutch masters. I maintain that
+however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old
+Dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become
+thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it.
+In order to be able to sound the real character and depth of
+manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and
+developed.
+
+It was long before I could summon up sufficient courage to enter this
+Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started
+on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as
+in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and
+many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness.
+
+I began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist
+in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. I realised that my
+chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of
+the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures.
+
+Having learned to look upon art from this point of view, I entered the
+old "Trippenhuis" with pleasure. Little by little the beauty and truth
+of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. I perceived that their
+simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in
+which they were treated. The artists were geniuses, and the world around
+them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late.
+
+Knowing little of art, I chose for my first copy a small canvas, a
+"Hermit" by Gerard Dou, not understanding that, though small, it might
+contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. I
+had to work it over and over again, for I could not get any shape in the
+thick, sticky paint. Then I tried a head by Van der Helst, and succeeded
+a little better.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
+
+This portrait may be seen to-day in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is
+said to be one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about
+1635.]
+
+At last I stopped before one of the heads in the "Syndics of the Cloth
+Merchants' Guild." The man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey
+hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. I felt that there was
+something in the portrait's beauty I could grasp and reproduce, though I
+saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from
+what I had attempted hitherto. However, the desire to reproduce this
+breadth of execution tempted me so much that I resolved to try my hand
+at it. I forget now what the copy looked like; I only remember that for
+years it hung on my studio wall.
+
+So I tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the
+different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "Night Patrol"
+and the "Syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but
+what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique Rembrandt.
+In his work I found something which all the others lacked. Freedom and
+exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and
+forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio.
+
+Although Frans Hals impressed me more than any other painter with the
+power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by
+Rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects.
+
+When I had looked at Rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, I used
+to go down to the ground floor in the "Trippenhuis" to the print
+cabinet. Here I found his etchings beautifully arranged. It was a
+pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table
+covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio
+and look at the gems they contained at leisure.
+
+I often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two
+hundred and forty masterpieces. The conservator never ceased urging me
+to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to
+compare them. How astonished I was to find in the painter who, with
+mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "Night Patrol," an
+accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a
+great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of
+the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper.
+
+Still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in
+these etchings. It was rather the singular inventive power shown in the
+different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the
+almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. The
+artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it
+found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate
+handling of the needle.
+
+Many Biblical subjects are represented in the Amsterdam collection; they
+are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in
+spite of their seeming incongruity. The conception is so highly
+original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding,
+that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted
+beside them.
+
+Among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike
+heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked
+at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the
+portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes.
+
+It is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving.
+Motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every
+curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. Each line has a meaning;
+not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole.
+
+Hokusai, the Japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old
+that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke
+of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. That is
+exactly what Rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he
+realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old Japanese; it is
+one of his earliest etchings.
+
+I re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful
+old Jewish beggars. They were types that were to be found by the score
+in the Amsterdam of those days, and Rembrandt delighted to draw them.
+One is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the
+master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which
+his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at.
+
+When I had looked enough at the etchings, I used to go home through the
+town, and it seemed to me as if I were meeting the very people I had
+just seen in the engravings. As I went through the "Hoog Straat" and
+"St. Anthony's Breestraat" to the "Joden Breestraat," where I lived a
+few doors from the famous house where Rembrandt dwelt and worked so
+long, I saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; I saw the vivid
+Hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women;
+the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses,
+the people, the sky. It was all Rembrandt--all Rembrandtesque. A great
+deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which I have
+been writing, yet, even now, whenever I pass through them I seem to see
+the colours, and the kind of people Rembrandt shows us in his works.
+
+In the meantime I had found a third manifestation of Rembrandt's talent,
+viz., his drawings. To a young painter, who himself was still groping in
+the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were
+exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus.
+
+Less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before I could
+properly appreciate them, but when I understood what I firmly believe
+still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting
+them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines I felt their
+true meaning. They were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings;
+emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. They have been
+thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand
+that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least
+sensation. When I looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by
+all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a
+seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully,
+they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a
+just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. The greater
+compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes--all
+are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
+
+This famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our National Gallery.
+It is on canvas 4 ft. 2+3/4 in. by 3 ft. 2 in.]
+
+One evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed
+us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however,
+being by contemporaries who had already become famous. Among them was
+one drawing by Rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar
+effect it produced in this collection. The scene represented on the old
+smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in
+composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the
+other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. Here was the
+master, towering above all.
+
+Thus I saw Rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and
+could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or
+etching needle. Whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a
+corner of old Amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful
+drawings. His pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naive. His
+nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared
+paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt,
+entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of
+reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or
+June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's
+washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the
+canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood.
+
+And the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that
+one can never look too long at them. All his work is done with a
+light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once
+the idea of painful study and exertion.
+
+
+II
+
+What do I think of the master now, after so many years?
+
+Come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression
+of Rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "The Night Patrol."
+
+Our way leads us now to the Ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the newly
+built "Rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to obtain a
+full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the struggle it
+cost to erect this temple of art.
+
+At first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade,
+which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies.
+Then, suddenly, two men seem to step out from the group. The one is
+dressed in sombre-coloured clothes, whilst the other is resplendent in
+white. That is Rembrandt all over, not afraid of putting the light in
+bold contrast against the dark. So as to maintain the harmony between
+the two he makes the dark man lift his hand as if he were pointing at
+something, and in doing so, he casts a softening shadow on his brilliant
+companion. Genius finds a way where ordinary mortals are at a loss how
+to help themselves. Clearly these men are in earnest conversation with
+each other, and it is quite evident that they are the leaders of the
+company.
+
+But when everything was put on the canvas that he intended to put there,
+the master stood in front of it and shook his head.
+
+To him these two leaders did not stand out sufficiently from the rest.
+So he took up his palette again, and again he dipped his broadest
+brushes deep in paint and with a few mighty strokes he transformed these
+two figures; a little more depth here, some more light there. He tried
+every means to give the scene more depth, and a fuller meaning. Then he
+saw that it was all right and left it.
+
+The likeness of his patrons was, perhaps, not very exact and most likely
+some murmurs were raised at the want of minutely finished detail; but he
+did not heed such matters. To him the main point was to make his figures
+live and breathe and move; and see how he succeeded! From the plumes of
+their hats to the soles of their feet everything is living, tangible.
+How full of energy and character are their heads! Their dress, the steel
+gorget, the boots of the man in white; everything bears witness to the
+wonderful power of the master.
+
+And look at the man in black, with his red bandolier, his gloves, and
+his stick. This does not strike one as anything out of the common,
+because the composition is so true, so perfectly natural and simple. I
+cannot remember having seen a single picture in which the peculiar style
+and picturesqueness of those days is so vividly expressed, as in the
+figures of these two men calmly walking along on the giant canvas.
+
+Now let us turn to the right and have a look at the perspiring drummer.
+His pock-marked face, overshadowed by a frayed hat, is of the true
+Falstaff type. The swollen nose, the thick-lipped mouth, every detail is
+carried out with the daring of the true artist which characterises all
+the master's work. Look at him, drumming away as if he wanted to make it
+known that he himself is one of the most magnificent specimens of the
+work of the genius whom men call Rembrandt.
+
+On looking at this man I can understand why Gerard de Lairesse exclaimed
+in his great book on painting: "In Rembrandt's pictures the paint is
+running down the panel like mud!" But it was only his conscientious
+narrow-mindedness which made him say it. Genius never fails to get into
+conflict with narrow thought.
+
+But now let us turn our attention to the left-hand corner. There we see
+that pithy soldier all in red. Rembrandt, with his intuitive knowledge
+of chiaroscuro, was not afraid of painting a figure all in red. He knew
+that the play of light and shade on the colour would help him out. Here
+part of the red is toned down by a beautiful soft tint, which makes the
+whole figure blend harmoniously with the greyish-green of the others.
+This man in red, too, has been treated in the same masterly manner of
+which I spoke above. If one looks at him attentively, it seems as if the
+man, who apparently might step out of the canvas at any rate, had been
+painted with one powerful sweep of the brush. How firm is the treatment
+of the hand loading the gun; how true the shadows on the red hat and
+jerkin. There the figure stands, alert, living, full of movement, rich
+in colour.
+
+In this marvellous picture we come across something striking at every
+turn. How life-like is the halberdier looking over his shoulder; and the
+man who is inspecting his gun, just behind the figure in white; observe
+the wonderful effect of the laughing boy in the grey hat against the
+dark background. Even the pillar which serves as a background to the man
+with the helmet adds to the harmony of the whole.
+
+But here we meet with something peculiar! What is that quaint little
+girl doing among all those men?
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--HEAD OF A YOUNG MAN. (Unknown)
+
+In the Louvre]
+
+Numbers of critics have racked their brains about the meaning of
+different details. But if Rembrandt could have heard them, he would have
+answered with a laugh, "Don't you see that I only wanted this child as a
+focus for the light, and a contrast with all the downward lines and dark
+colours?"
+
+The man with the banner in the background, the dog running away, all
+these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and
+colour. There is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray
+a rare talent. This is a case in which the assertion, "Cut me a piece
+out of a picture and I will tell you if it is by an artist," could
+successfully be applied.
+
+Now, I hope my readers won't object to accompanying me a little further,
+and stopping with me before the "Syndics." There it hangs, the great
+simple canvas, quite different in character from the "Night Patrol."
+
+Everything here is dignified and stately. The whole picture is a
+glorious witness to the consummate knowledge the master possessed of
+expressing the individual soul in the human face. Here they sit, those
+old Dutch fathers, assembled in solemn conclave, debating about their
+trade, with the books on the table in front of them; and Rembrandt has
+painted these heads so true to life that in the course of years they
+have become like old friends; yes, old friends, though they lived
+hundreds of years before we were dreamt of.
+
+How long have I known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of
+his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing
+from under the high steeple-hat? The flesh tints in the face, whether
+catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless
+variety of shades, and the neutral greens and reds, greys and yellows,
+are put against each other in such a wonderful manner that an effect
+has been attained which strikes us dumb with admiration. The way in
+which he is made to stand out from the background is in itself
+marvellous, but just look at the man! how full of life and understanding
+is the look in those eyes. It is something quite unique, something
+Rembrandt himself has never surpassed.
+
+And then there are the other figures; the man who is leaning forward;
+the one sitting right in front of the book, his neighbour; even the
+fifth merchant on the right, with his servant behind him--one and all
+are full of life and light.
+
+The background is such as Rembrandt only, with his understanding of
+lines, could have devised. The wall and the panelling shut in the
+composition in such a way that one cannot possibly imagine it ever
+having been otherwise. And even this skilful touch is made subordinate
+to the warm red colour of the tablecloth, which lends the picture an
+additional depth.
+
+I don't know whether this picture was very much discussed by Rembrandt's
+contemporaries when it was finished. But to us, who have seen so much of
+the art of the great Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, these heads are
+the highest achievement of the art of painting.
+
+When I was in Madrid, where I was charmed by Velasquez' work, our party
+was one day walking through the broad streets of the capital. Passing a
+large, picturesque building, our attention was attracted by a gaudy
+poster informing us that an exhibition of the works of modern Spanish
+artists was being held within. Our curiosity being aroused, we entered,
+and found that in this country, where so many famous artists lived and
+worked, there are among the modern artists many studious, highly
+talented men, who serve their art with true love and devotion. But
+suddenly it seemed as if we had been carried by magic from Spain back to
+Amsterdam. We had come face to face with a copy of the "Syndics,"
+painted by a Spanish artist during a stay in Amsterdam.
+
+Was it national prejudice, or was it conviction? I don't know; but this
+copy spoke to us of a spirit of greater simplicity, of a truer
+conception of the nature and dignity of mankind than anything we had
+admired in the Prado. Yes; this picture even kills its own Dutch
+brothers. It makes Van der Helst look superficial, and Franz Hals
+unfinished and flat. So much thoroughness and depth combined with such
+freedom and grace of movement is not to be found anywhere else.
+
+These people have lived on the canvas for centuries, and they will
+outlive us all. And the man who achieved this masterpiece was at the
+time of its production a poor, struggling burgher living in an obscure
+corner of the town where his tercentenary festival was lately
+celebrated.
+
+
+III
+
+But this is not the place for the sad reflections which are awakened in
+our minds on examining the records of him whose name the world now
+glorifies and raises to the skies. Better to honour the great master
+who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. There
+is no need to-day to drag Rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past
+to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from
+the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to
+whom Holland proudly points as one of her own sons.
+
+On the contrary, never was Rembrandt's art valued so highly as it is
+now. Archives and documents are searched for details about his life and
+works. We want to know all about his life, and are anxious to share his
+inmost feelings in prosperity and adversity. The houses where he lived
+are marked down and bought by art-lovers. At the present time Rembrandt
+is in the zenith of his glory. Gold loses its value where his pictures
+are concerned. Fortunes are spent to secure the most insignificant of
+his works; people travel across continents to see them; and criticism,
+which for long years did little more than snarl at Rembrandt, has for
+nearly fifty years been dumb.
+
+It is remarkable that none of the great painters have, in the course of
+years, been subjected to so much criticism as Rembrandt. And
+notwithstanding all the things which have been said about the
+improbability of the scene, and the exaggeration of the dark background,
+the "Night Patrol" is now, as it ever was and ever will be, the "World's
+wonder," as our English neighbours say.
+
+During his lifetime there were people who condemned Rembrandt because he
+refused to follow in the footsteps of the old Italian painters, because
+he persisted in painting nature as he saw it.
+
+To us such a reproach seems strange, yet it is quite true. Even during
+the last years of Rembrandt's life a growing dissatisfaction with the
+existing ideas on art and literature had taken possession of the Dutch
+mind. People developed a morbid taste for everything classical; and when
+I read in the prose works and poems of these days the Latinised names
+and the constant allusions to Greek gods and goddesses and mythological
+personages, so strangely out of place under our northern sky, I am
+filled with disgust.
+
+It was fortunate, indeed, that Rembrandt always felt strong in his own
+conviction and only followed his own views. For many years after his
+death, even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of
+art critics raised objections against the dangerous theories of which
+his pictures were the expression. Again and again they attacked his
+technical treatment; none of them ever grasped its deeper, fuller
+meaning.
+
+Happily those days are far behind us. A great number of books and
+pamphlets have been published on Rembrandt during the last fifty years,
+and they are almost unanimous in their praise and admiration of the
+great master. The more liberal feelings of the modern world have
+achieved some victories in the realms of art as well as elsewhere. We
+moderns feel that the apparent shortcomings and exaggerations are
+nothing but the inevitable peculiarities attendant upon genius. And we
+even go so far that we would not have him be without a single one of
+them, for fear of losing the slightest trait in the character of the
+great man whose every movement roused our intellectual faculties.
+
+So Rembrandt has been raised in our days to the pinnacle of fame which
+is his by right; the festival of his tercentenary was acknowledged by
+the whole civilised world as the natural utterance of joy and pride of
+our small country in being able to count among its children the great
+Rembrandt.
+
+I finish,--"with the pen, but not with the heart!" For if I should go on
+until the inclination to add more to what I have written here should
+fail me, my readers would have tired of me long before I had tired of my
+subject. I am thinking of that rare gem, the portrait of Jan Six--of the
+Louvre, of Cassel, of Brunswick, of what not!
+
+May these pages convey to the reader the fact that I have always looked
+upon Rembrandt as the true type of an artist, free, untrammelled by
+traditions, genial in all he did; in short, a figure in whom all the
+great qualities of the old Republic of the United Provinces were
+concentrated and reflected.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: The "Trippenhuis" was used as a picture gallery before the
+Ryksmuseum was built. It was an old patrician family mansion belonging
+to the Trip family. Several members of this family filled important
+posts in the government of the old Republic of the United Provinces, and
+some were burgomasters of Amsterdam.]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Arti et Amicitiae" is a society of modern Dutch painters.
+Occasionally the members organise exhibitions of the work of
+contemporary countrymen or of foreign artists, and every year there is
+an exhibition of their own works. These shows are held in the society's
+own building in Amsterdam at the corner of the "Rokin" and "Spui."]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rembrandt, by Josef Israels
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