I
[Plate 1. View of Amsterdam from the East. ]
Plate 1. View of Amsterdam from the East. _(reversed)_. After the etching
by Rembrandt
“The city seems to float upon the waters and looks like the sovereign of
the deep. It is crowded with merchants of every nation and its habitants
are themselves the most eminent merchants in the world. It appears, at
first, not to be the city of any particular people, but to be common to
all, as the centre of their commerce. The vessels in this harbour are so
numerous, as almost to hide the water in which they float; and the masts
look at a distance like a forest.”
“I gazed, with insatiable curiosity, upon this great city, in which
everything was in motion.”
This impression of Amsterdam by a seventeenth century author (1) takes us
back to the time when no rivals had yet contested with the town its
commercial monopoly,— when its full and radiant display struck the eyes of
every visitor. Tempted though we feel to recall this glorious past (the
period and direct surroundings of its greatest painter), we naturally take
Amsterdam’s present state as a basis, and in doing so painfully notice the
loss of precious reminiscences which the course of time has inevitably
involved. But realising that such loss is not only the consequence of
neglect and lack of respect, and that to a large degree modern life with
its different requirements and intensity forcibly causes cruel changes, we
must conquer our regrets and rather view with open eyes the vitality of
the town and the renewed energy of its present existence. Sad indeed is
the aspect of towns, known as “dead cities,” which preserve their old
architectural appearance, and where all life seems extinguished. They are
but their own shadows and a perpetual outcry against the reverses of Fate
or the relaxation of human energy, which proved unable to carry on the
aspirations of preceding generations. Fortunately Amsterdam escaped this
disgrace, because its spark of life never quite died out; the burning
vigour of its inhabitants, which was instrumental in raising the town’s
prosperity in the seventeenth century, may seem a high-flaming fire
compared to the peaceful existence of its rich population in the
eighteenth century; and it may be true that the former energy and
enterprise were reduced to glowing embers about the beginning of the
nineteenth century; but let it be recognised that the same fire always
smouldered and that it is now spreading anew with a sympathetic
stubbornness. When Motley says, in his “History of the United
Netherlands,” that the Dutch Republic was “sea-born and sea-sustained,” we
have to apply this, in the first place, to its most important town,
Amsterdam, and if we then remember that the suppression of a nation
accustomed to maritime pursuits is one of the rarest things in history, we
shall arrive at a better understanding of Amsterdam’s vitality.
In a town where life so maintained its course, we cannot expect to find
whole quarters preserved, just as they appeared in the first half of the
seventeenth century; the general disposition of the town, however, is so
original and effective that its indestructible plan survived until our
days. There are in the world but few towns that possess such a charming
singularity, and Venice is probably the only town offering a similar
attraction, although it differs in many respects. Hence, Amsterdam’s
surname of _The Venice of the North_ is easily accounted for, and appears
already in the writings of Guicciardini, the sixteenth-century historian.
It is the water that lends to the town its peculiar charm, and while some
canals had to be filled in to create carriage accommodation in the old
parts, most were preserved, and though in their water other house-fronts
are reflected, the visitor can reconstruct, without great difficulty, a
vision of Amsterdam in Rembrandt’s days.
Let us offer some help to the visitor in his efforts to revive the old
town in his imagination. Such assistance is needed, because Amsterdam is
not a place where one would prefer to be left alone with his dreams.
Modern life overshadows the past to such an extent, that one cannot
transpose one’s self three centuries by simply eliminating the present;
there are no ruins which induce us to reconstruct, in our mind, that which
has vanished, no population which has arrested its progress at the period
of its greatest prosperity. Fortunately the _nature_ of Amsterdam’s
beauty and originality has not changed and from this fact every newcomer
may derive great help in his efforts to rebuild the scenes of bygone
times.
First of all, let the stranger take into consideration that Rembrandt took
up his abode in the town when it was rapidly growing, and when the
picturesqueness of its late-mediaeval appearance had to concede to graver
conceptions, based on the classics and the Italian renaissance. Let him
remember that the threefold girdle of wide canals lined with big houses,
which now embraces the old city, was at that time only in course of
construction, and that less stately canals preserved a more intimate
aspect. These narrower waterways in the heart of the old town, filled
with barges between quays crowded with merchandise, reveal more the city’s
growth and nature,—the stately but less lively canals of a later extension
typify better the pride and ease ensuing from the reaped harvest.
When Rembrandt came to Amsterdam about 1631 he found the town broken
through its boundaries and new quarters risen on the fields outside, which
a former generation had known only as meadows and vegetable gardens. The
artist must have noticed many changes even since he passed his years of
apprenticeship in Amsterdam in the studio of Pieter Lastman, returning
again to his native town Leyden during the intermediate seven or eight
years.
Until the period of Rembrandt’s settling in Amsterdam, this city, although
having been long the metropolis of the Northern Netherlands, had not been
very different in aspect to other important Dutch towns; its
seventeenth-century buildings belong to the same school of architecture as
those of the other cities, like Haarlem, Alkmaar, Leyden. Its immense
prosperity and development as Europe’s most important seaport since about
1600, however, originated a notable change: its aspect gradually became
more individual, until in the second part of the golden century it had
assumed the grandeur worthy of “the capital of Europe, the neighbours’
support and hope,” as our greatest poet then justly called her. Important
buildings and a very logically and royally planned extension of its canals
and streets were the causes of this alteration. We do not know of any
other big town of that period so systematically laid out, with such a
preservation of its original beauty and with such an outspoken aim to
obtain in its new thoroughfares a similar attraction to the eyes. Of all
the cities of the Netherlands none possessed the means, or were forced to
undertake such big works, as Amsterdam. Consequently the best Dutch
architects of that time erected their finest and most important edifices
in Amsterdam, and very often exclusively built there; and this accounts
for her assuming that individual aspect of stateliness.
Rembrandt got acquainted in Amsterdam with two distinct architectural
periods: 1st, the one just closed on his arrival, dominated by the eminent
architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser (father of the celebrated
portrait-painter Thomas de Keyser); 2d, the following period, influenced
by Jacob van Campen. The first period enriched Amsterdam with a great
number of buildings, generally in red brick with decorations in clear
sandstone, of a varied and often baroque appearance; their style, although
based on early sixteenth-century Italian renaissance, may be called a
typical Dutch one, strongly personified as it was, towards the end of the
sixteenth century, by Netherlandish architects, like Cornells Floris and
Vredeman de Vries.—In the second period, when the classical style after
Palladio became generally accepted, the variety of aspect and the baroque
details had to yield to monumentality and severity.
[Plate 2. The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam.]
Plate 2. The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam. After an engraving by Cl. Jz.
Visscher.
The spirit of the town’s aspirations is best reflected in her town-hall,
which marks the culminating point of her evolution (about 1650). That
imposing square building, still in existence in Amsterdam’s centre, called
the Dam, must be familiar to all who have visited the town, and the
interested art-lover may have noted that this building, grand and
magnificent as it is, has no typical Dutch character such as marks
Amsterdam’s earlier buildings. He will have remarked a strong tendency to
the classic style of Italy, and the rich marble sculptures inside must
have appeared to him as belonging to another school than the contemporary
Dutch pictures, which he admired in Amsterdam’s Rÿksmuseum. In this
circumstance we may find the clue to the disharmony which existed between
Rembrandt and his surroundings in his later years. His art and the spirit
of his contemporaries were going athwart with different aims. When the
artist settled down in Amsterdam, at the age of twenty-five, circumstances
were still favourable to a good mutual understanding: the ambitious and
pulsating spirit of the growing commercial city must have felt akin to the
boisterous aspirations of the young, gifted artist. His great material
success during the first years furnishes a proof of this supposition.
Then more and more came the alienation, and it is most instructive to
compare the different results at which the artist and the intelligent
population arrived: the artist, guided by the strength of his immense
personality and talent, remained himself, but his fellow-citizens
gradually changed their taste and predilections in matters of art and
intellect, uncertain as they were of themselves in these matters. Being
more gifted as traders than as artists, they showed that short-sightedness
and narrowmindedness in judging their contemporary artists, which so often
repeats itself in history (even in our time!). They were unable to
understand the strength and value of the country’s native art, and turned
to foreign taste, even to foreign workmanship, as in the case of the
commission to Quellinus, the Flemish sculptor, to execute the sculptures
in the town-hall, thus emphasizing their preference for the school of
Rubens and Van Dyck above the one of Hals and Rembrandt. This tendency
occasioned a preference for foreign theories and forms, and so we see
between 1648 and 1660 a town-hall built, ten times bigger than the former
one and costing, according to our money, about twenty million guilders,
resulting in a work of art, imposing but not essentially Dutch (plates
_2_, _3_, _4_).
[Plate 3. The Ruins of the Old Town Hall in Amsterdam, after the Fire in
1652.]
Plate 3. The Ruins of the Old Town Hall in Amsterdam, after the Fire in
1652. After the drawing by Rembrandt, formerly in the Heseltine
Collection, now in the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam.
[Plate 4. The New Town-Hall in Amsterdam, about 1660.]
Plate 4. The New Town-Hall in Amsterdam, about 1660. The square building
on the right is the public Weighing-House, where Rembrandt sketched the
ruins of the old town-hall (see preceding illustration). After an etching
by J. van der Ulft, 1656.
[Plate 5. The Bridge Called “Grimnessesluis” in Amsterdam.]
Plate 5. The Bridge Called “Grimnessesluis” in Amsterdam. After the
drawing by Rembrandt in the Louvre, Paris. Reproduced, by permission,
from a copyright photograph by Messrs. Braun and Co., Dornach.
What we know of Rembrandt in connection with Amsterdam’s town-hall
supports the above theory: he seems to have liked the old building, a
Late-Gothic structure, as he sketched it twice, once after its fire in
1652. On the other hand, when in 1662 he executes a large decoration for
the new town-hall, his work does not agree with the taste of his
contemporaries and is returned to him (_The Plot of Claudius Civilis_, now
much cut down, in the Museum at Stockholm). Considering Rembrandt’s style
of expressing himself in his work, we find many instances to convince us
of his preference for the architectural forms of an earlier period and of
his lack of sympathy for those which were introduced during the later part
of his life. Is it to be wondered at that he, the warm-feeling artist,
offspring of a school which affected richness and baroque, was no friend
of a new tendency, the stateliness and broadness of which were bound to
degenerate into coldness and stiffness? Looking through his drawings and
etchings (his pictures leave us no town-views taken from nature), we
occasionally meet views of town-gates, old houses alone or crowded
together, mills, all obviously sketched on account of a charm akin to
Rembrandt’s nature but foreign to the greatest part of the lay population
of Amsterdam. Some illustrations will show the master’s preferences: a
view on a little old bridge between compact houses, a spot called
_Grimnessesluis_, still forming nowadays, notwithstanding many later
alterations, one of the most typical views of old Amsterdam (_plate 5_).
We must here resist the temptation of reproducing some of Rembrandt’s
drawings of picturesque towngates (like those in the Louvre, Rÿksmuseum at
Amsterdam, the collections of M. Bonnat, the Duke of Devonshire, and
Teyler at Haarlem),(2) because these appear to have been done on an
excursion through the Netherlands, and cannot be identified with former
gates of Amsterdam; there is, however, another drawing, more closely
connected with landscape, giving a view of St. Anthony’s Gate, quite near
Rembrandt’s house, at the end of the street where he lived, taken from the
north outside the bulwark (_plate 6_). On the opposite side of the town
Rembrandt did that delightful sketch with the many mills in the foreground
(_plate 7_). In the city he again sketched a former fortification-tower,
called Montelbaenstoren (_plate 9_), showing to its right a perspective of
the harbour. We miss in this drawing the steeple, with which it had been
ornamented since 1606; the municipality had the good sense, when new
extensions were carried out in the beginning of the seventeenth century,
to preserve the old fortification-towers which became useless because of
the ramparts stretching farther, and to transform them into belfries by
giving them graceful steeples with carillons. Some of them, like the one
mentioned here, have lasted till our days; and when the stranger is kept
awake at night, in his hotel, by the gay clangor of their bells, he may
grumble at them, unused as he is to their music, but when he hears them in
daytime he should respect these three-centuries-old tones and meditate
like Rossetti, when he was impressed by Van Eyck’s and Memling’s works in
Bruges:—
The carillon, which then did strike
Mine ears, was heard of theirs alike;
It set me closer unto them.
[Plate 6. View of the Ramparts of Amsterdam, with the St. Anthony-Gate in
the Distance.]
Plate 6. View of the Ramparts of Amsterdam, with the St. Anthony-Gate in
the Distance. After the drawing by Rembrandt, formerly in the Heseltine
Collection.
[Plate 7. Mills on the West Side of Amsterdam, Looking Toward the Town]
Plate 7. Mills on the West Side of Amsterdam, Looking Toward the Town.
After the drawing by Rembrandt, formerly in the Heseltine Collection, now
in a private collection in Kopenhagen.
[Plate 8. View of the Same Side of Town as in Plate 7, but Looking
Outward. ]
Plate 8. View of the Same Side of Town as in Plate 7, but Looking Outward.
The tower on the left is the same as sketched by Rembrandt (_plate 13_).
After an etching by R. Zeeman, about 1650.
A more complete view of this site the reader will find in an etching by
Zeeman (_plate 10_), where the tower is seen with its steeple which
Rembrandt omitted because he considered the comparatively modern top in
disharmony with the older body of the tower, or rather for the simple
reason that his paper did not allow him sufficient space. Another
steepleless tower is drawn by him when he sketches the stronghold
Swyght-Utrecht with adjacent buildings (plates _12_ and _20_). Finally,
there is the drawing of the tower of the Westerkerk, the only sketch after
a more severe architecture, rather a transition from the earlier style of
De Keyser to the later one of Van Campen (_plate 13_).
[Plate 9. The Tower Called “Montelraanstoren” In Amsterdam]
Plate 9. The Tower Called “Montelraanstoren” In Amsterdam After the
drawing by Rembrandt, formerly in the Heseltine Collection, now in the
Rembrandt House, Amsterdam
[Plate 10. The Same Tower as in the Preceding Illustration, with its
Steeple and Surroundings.]
Plate 10. The Same Tower as in the Preceding Illustration, with its
Steeple and Surroundings. After an etching by R. Zeeman, about 1650.
[Plate 11. The Canal called “Singel” in Amsterdam. ]
Plate 11. The Canal called “Singel” in Amsterdam. On the left-hand side
Rembrandt’s son, Titus, lived during his short married life. In the
distance, the “Janroopoortstoren”. After an etching by R. Zeeman, about
1650.
In trying to reconstruct a picture of Amsterdam in Rembrandt’s time, we
must realise the architectural _forms_ as well as the _colours_. It is
natural that the town’s colouristic aspect should harmonize with the
colour schemes which we admire in Holland, in its landscapes, on its
rivers and seacoast, in the pictorial masterpieces of its artists and in
its interiors, which means that in the city also we are fascinated by the
richness of tints, always subdued and variegated by a certain haziness.
It is a richness of a very subtle nature: no opposition of strong tints,
but an endless, mostly light-scaled variety of transitions, now and then
relieved by a more powerful note like the red of a roof or the paint of a
boat; these higher notes are generally of a freshness as if they had been
washed by a recent rain. Against a sky, of which the blue or the clouds
bear a bloom of a silvery hue, the houses show the tone of their bricks
going from red-brown to a pale purple in so many deviations that the
uniform indication of red would be unjust. The trembling of the lights
and shades of water all through the town and the green of so many trees
planted along the quays, were of course two conditions which strongly
helped in producing a particular colouristic charm and which meant an
advantage over so many foreign towns. Both these elements were and are
still not to be found to such an extent in any other city, Venice
naturally excepted on account of her waterways. Concentrating our
attention rather on colour than shape, we might retain for one moment the
comparison with Venice, as it may help us to understand still better the
value of what we were just admiring in Amsterdam. By reason of their
situation, their prosperity, their universality, their natural educational
advantages, both towns were, so to say, bound to produce a great school of
painters, and we need not here allude to the glory with which both towns
covered themselves on this field in the eyes of the art world. Stress
should, however, be laid here on the fact that the two towns in question
brought forth the two greatest schools of colourists, a fact which shows
how in these centres circumstances favour the development of colouristic
talents. Mindful of the fact that the great painters are our teachers in
the appreciation of nature’s beauties and charms, we should, for our own
instruction, contrast the two schools and try to discern the difference in
their common merits. We shall then notice that “richness in colour” does
not mean the same in both cities. As opposed to the abundance of glowing
colours on the exuberant Venetian palette, we should place the subtile
gradations, the well-balanced and restrained splendour and the endless
variations of the seemingly restricted colour scale of the Dutch artist.
We shall so learn to love both better than we did before and, needless to
say, our eyes will then be more open to the value of Amsterdam’s scenery
which so often inspired or stimulated the painters.
[Plate 12. The Tower called “Swyght-Utrecht”, and the “Doelen” in
Amsterdam]
Plate 12. The Tower called “Swyght-Utrecht”, and the “Doelen” in Amsterdam
(see _plate 20_). After the drawing by Rembrandt in the collection of Dr.
C. Hofsteded de Groot, The Hague.
After this little excursion let us reconsider the town’s appearance. In
doing so, we must remember that it was already highly flourishing when
Rembrandt settled within its ramparts; consequently it is clear that by
far the greater part of the living houses belonged to the more picturesque
preceding period. The houses generally had three or four stories, and
their fronts were without exception crowned by pointed gables, most of
them stepped. In the older quarters, where the houses were more crowded
together, they very often had more stories and were strangely tall, but
everywhere that irregular saw-like profile, formed by the steep-pitched
gable-tops, appeared silhouetted against the sky (horizontal roof-lines,
more in accordance with the new style of Van Campen, were slowly
introduced but remained scarce). All these house-fronts were, as we said
before, gay in colour and enlivened by sandstone ornaments, windows with
their small glistening panes set in lead, brightly painted shutters, here
and there woodwork decorating the house-fronts, and as a rule an
artistically carved stone-panel with figures and inscription or date
lending a separate character to each house. The house in which Rembrandt
passed most of the years and in which he knew fortune and fame as well as
sorrow and reverse, offers a good type of the then prevailing domestic
architecture (_plate 16_). The house still exists and has become, since
its restoration, a few years ago, a place of pilgrimage for art-loving
tourists. We must, however, here call attention to a fact which is
generally unknown to the public, namely, that, though restored, the house
does not appear as it probably looked when Rembrandt lived in it. This
does not so much apply to the interior, because everybody will understand
the impossibility of reconstructing the artist’s direct surroundings, for
lack of the furniture and works of art with which Rembrandt had crowded
it. More noteworthy is the fact that the facade has quite a different
character. The outer appearance of a house should as much as possible
give a true illustration of the time at which it was built, especially as
this one had retained its original form, apparently, when its greatest
occupant inhabited it. In its restored condition it still preserves
important additions which date from a later period. The two sketches on
_plate 16_ show us how the original picturesque stepped gable was changed
into a cornice with a tympanon, giving a different appearance to the
house. Any eye familiar with Dutch architecture will detect in the front,
in its present state, a difference in period between its lower and upper
part. The latter is about fifty years later, and the whole shows a
mixture of the two styles which we have described: the earlier, varied
style of a De Keyser and the later, more classical style of Van Campen’s
school (his pupil Vingboons?). Probability, based on maps and documents
like Rembrandt’s inventory of 1656, and a recently discovered account
regarding alterations done by the subsequent owners, and, moreover, the
convincing difference in style, lead us to the conviction that the
alteration in the front dates very shortly after Rembrandt’s departure
from the house, i.e. about 1660, when it was divided into two narrower
residences. The house-front, as it looks now, was probably familiar to
Rembrandt in the last ten years of his life, even though we take into
consideration his probable disinclination to look again and again at the
place, where he had passed twenty years of his life, and where misfortune
had cruelly put an end to better days; it is, however, an open question
whether such a consideration offers sufficient ground for a restoration of
the kind recently carried out. Nevertheless we have to be thankful to the
trustees that the house was saved, because it is Rembrandt’s most intimate
memorial, aside from his own work, left to posterity.
[Plate 13. The Tower Called “Westertoren” In Amsterdam.]
Plate 13. The Tower Called “Westertoren” In Amsterdam. After the drawing
by Rembrandt, in the Fodor Museum, Amsterdam
[Plate 14. The Canal called “Prinsengracht” in Amsterdam. ]
Plate 14. The Canal called “Prinsengracht” in Amsterdam. The tower seen on
the left is the same as seen in the preceding illustration. After an
etching by R. Zeeman, about 1650.
[Plate 15. The St. Anthony-Market in Amsterdam, with the Old Gate
Transformed into a Weighing-House. ]
Plate 15. The St. Anthony-Market in Amsterdam, with the Old Gate
Transformed into a Weighing-House. After an etching by R. Zeeman, about
1650.
[Plate 16. Rembrandt’s House In The “St. Anthonie-breestraat” In Amsterdam
]
Plate 16. Rembrandt’s House In The “St. Anthonie-breestraat” In Amsterdam
On the left: As it must have looked when Rembrandt occupied it. On the
right: Present state.
This house welcomed Rembrandt in 1639, when he acquired it for 13,000
florins (a good price in those days, showing that it was a desirable
residence) and saw itself adorned with a unique collection of works of art
which its owner, passionate collector that he was, did not cease to
enlarge. That same house saw its illustrious occupant become more and
more retiring, misunderstood by the majority of the public and finally
struck by reverses, till a total bankruptcy necessitated the sale of the
house in 1658. It has often been thought, that his undying mania for
collecting was the principal cause of his misfortune, but a document,
recently discovered, shows that Rembrandt was, like so many of his
fellow-citizens, the victim of the economic reverses caused by the first
Anglo-Dutch war. In 1653 nearly the whole trade was at a standstill, 1500
houses (others speak of double the number) stood empty, and on the 27th of
June even the magistrate decided to leave off one of the two principal
stories from its new magnificent town-hall, then in course of
construction, a resolution which fortunately was revoked two years later.
As a matter of fact trade weakened heavily until 1660, suffering reverses,
not only from England’s attitude, but also from France’s and Sweden’s
fiendish acts. Although the town energetically opposed its enemies, often
against the will of the Netherlands’ States, it could not at once redress
its internal depression, and we should not wonder at seeing the artist
Rembrandt among the victims. He avows in the document that he lost
considerably in trade, especially in maritime ventures. It seems that the
trading hobby, innate in most Dutchmen at that time, was also strong in
him; in an act of 1634 we see him already designated as “merchant” and not
as artist!
The house seems rather to have gone up in value, for it realised in these
bad times nearly as much as Rembrandt had originally paid for it. This is
not to be wondered at, as it stood in a very profitable quarter. The
street followed the course of a dike, called the St. Anthoniesdÿk, from
which it derived its name; this dike was then and had always been an
important way of access to Amsterdam, as it was the only direct route to
Diemen, Weesp, and Muiden. In the beginning of the seventeenth century it
was inhabited by many aristocratic families, with whom gradually
intermingled Portuguese Jewish refugees, as this was a new quarter where
they could more easily find living accommodation. As time went on, Jewish
occupants began to dominate, and towards the close of the century the
street was for that reason rebaptised from St. Anthoniebreestraat into
Joden (= Jews’) breestraat. We find this change illustrated in the fact
that, when Rembrandt bought this house, one of his neighbours was a Jew,
called Salvador Rodrigue, the other a Christian fellow-painter Nicolaes
Eliasz, but when he left the house, Eliasz had died in 1654 and been
succeeded by Daniel Pinto, again a noted Jewish name. These Portuguese
Jewish families were a great advantage to the town and should in no way be
placed on a par with the poor Jews, mostly of German and Polish descent,
now occupying this quarter. The Portuguese Jews were highly cultured,
well-to-do, orderly, and clean people; one of their most brilliant minds
was Menasseh-ben-Israel, Rabbi at the Synagogue situated on a canal just
behind Rembrandt’s house, a great linguist, the first Hebraic printer in
the Netherlands, the teacher of the celebrated philosopher Spinoza, a
sympathetic and admirable figure, whom we see until the close of his life
in friendly relations with Rembrandt.
[Plate 17. The Bridge and Sluice called “St. Anthonie-sluis” in
Amsterdam, seen from the North. ]
Plate 17. The Bridge and Sluice called “St. Anthonie-sluis” in Amsterdam,
seen from the North. Rembrandt’s home (_plate 16_) stood in the immediate
vicinity of this spot. After the drawing by A. Waterloo, in the Fodor
Museum, Amsterdam.
If from this centre we look a little further around, we find in the same
quarter other sites memorable in the artist’s life: first of all in the
same street, also near the bridge where Rembrandt’s own house stood, we
recognise the house of Mr. Hendrick Uylenburgh, a noted dealer in pictures
and works of art and a publisher, with whom Rembrandt stood in close
relation while yet residing in Leyden. This relationship was further
strengthened when the artist, coming for good to Amsterdam, resided with
Uylenburgh and remained in his house for some years, during which time he
had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Uylenburgh’s charming
cousin Saskia, Rembrandt’s future wife. He married her in 1634, remaining
at Uylenburgh’s house until 1635. During these years Rembrandt seems to
have kept a large studio, especially for his pupils, in a warehouse on the
Bloemgracht, a quarter where we shall find him again much later. Passing
along the same street, towards the centre of the town, we pass on the
right, opposite the Zuiderkerk, the house where Lastman lived when he
instructed the young Rembrandt, and at the end of the street we notice a
heavy Late-Gothic building, the St. Anthonieswaag, formerly one of the
gates, when the town was less extensive, but now changed into a Public
Weighing House. Rembrandt’s contemporary, the etcher Zeeman, has left us
a charming little print of this edifice, reproduced on _plate 15_. The
reason it should now interest us is because on its first floor it lodged
the Surgeons’ Guild, for which Rembrandt painted, in 1632, his celebrated
_Anatomical Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp_, now in the museum at The Hague.
The commission for this masterpiece of Rembrandt’s younger years was
perhaps, because of its dimensions, one of the reasons for his removal
from Leyden to Amsterdam, as its date corresponds with his establishment
in Amsterdam. During two centuries the picture ornamented the interior of
this building, together with another, still more wonderful, painting by
him, _The Anatomical Lesson of Dr. Deyman_, of which only a central
fragment was saved from a fire, now in the Amsterdam Ryksmuseum. Turning
our back to the big building and following the canal partly reproduced in
the foreground of Zeeman’s etching, we pass on the left the house of Mr.
Six, whom Rembrandt must have visited often, and come in a few minutes
into the Doelenstraat, at the corner of which stood a massive tower,
remainder of ancient fortifications, sketched by Rembrandt as we saw on
_plate 12_. Next to this building was the Doelen (part of its back can be
seen on the master’s above-mentioned drawing), the meeting-place of the
civic guards, now changed into a hotel of the same name, but in
Rembrandt’s day the place where the painter’s most famous picture, _The
Night Watch_, was kept, since a captain of the guards, Banning Cocq, had
the daring idea of entrusting Rembrandt with the commission to portray him
and his company. Two houses further along the street (a site now occupied
by a bank, next to Messrs. Frederik Muller & Co.) we must pay attention to
the place where Rembrandt lived in 1636. After his removal from his cousin
Uylenburgh’s house, Rembrandt himself states this address as “next to the
pensionary Boreel” in a letter to the Prince of Orange’s secretary,
Huygens, a letter now preserved in the collection of Mr. Paul Warburg in
New York. That house must have been brand new in 1636, as building on
that side of the Doelenstraat was only started in 1635 (plates _18_, _19_,
and _20_). It seems, however, not to have satisfied the painter, because
three years later, before his removal to his own house in the St.
Anthoniebreestraat, he gives his address, in another letter to Huygens, as
being on the Amstel in a house called De suikerbakkerÿ (the sugar
refinery) the exact situation of which has not yet been traced.
[Plate 18. The “doelenstraat” In Amsterdam (old situation) ]
Plate 18. The “doelenstraat” In Amsterdam (old situation) The receding
building, behind the low wall with gate, on the right, is the “Doelen” for
which Rembrandt painted “The Night Watch.” The house where the master
lived in 1636 was next to the house seen on the extreme right. The tower
seen above the roof is the one sketched by Rembrandt (_plate 12_). Compare
also _plate 20_ After the drawing by R. Vinkeles in the Archives in
Amsterdam
Returning from this Doelenstraat to Rembrandt’s restored house where we
started our little excursion, and taking a street called the Staalstraat
on our right, we should observe a building on our left called the
Staalhof, the birthplace of that other masterpiece, rivalling _The Night
Watch_ in fame, namely The Staalmeesters (The Syndics). When this great
painting was achieved in 1661, Rembrandt, forced by the sale of his house,
had already left this quarter of the town, but it is pleasing to notice
that the Staalmeesters had not forgotten the great painter, who had long
lived in their neighbourhood.
[Plate 19. The Back of the Houses in the “Doelenstraat” in Amsterdam. ]
Plate 19. The Back of the Houses in the “Doelenstraat” in Amsterdam. The
narrow house in the middle, two windows wide, is, although rebuilt, the
one where Rembrandt lived in 1636. To the left, part of Messrs. Frederk
Muller & Co.’s aution and exhibition rooms.
[Plate 20. The Tower “Swyght-Utrecht” and the Backs of the Houses of the
“Doelenstraat” in Amsterdam.]
Plate 20. The Tower “Swyght-Utrecht” and the Backs of the Houses of the
“Doelenstraat” in Amsterdam. The third house from the tower must be the
one occupied by Rembrandt in 1636. After an engraving by van Meurs of
about 1660.
[Plate 21. The Old Exchange in Amsterdam. ]
Plate 21. The Old Exchange in Amsterdam. After an engraving by Cl. Jz.
Visscher.
To complete our survey of Rembrandt’s dwellings in Amsterdam, we must
finally follow him on his retirement, when, owing to his bankruptcy, his
wonderful collection had been dispersed to the winds under the
auctioneer’s hammer, and when he had to leave his large house, the court
allowing him to take only two stoves and some partitions in the attic. We
have therefore to cross the entire town in its width and repair to its
western extension, where he lived about ten years until his death, most of
this time in the company of his son Titus, and with his second wife
Hendrickje Stoffels, until her death in 1664. On examining the map of the
town and comparing the design of the new western quarters around the
Rozengracht with the remainder of the town, we observe an incongruity in
city planning, which calls for an explanation. The oldest part in the
centre faces the harbour and logically follows upwards the course of the
Amstel River; the lay-out of the canals in that part is in accordance
therewith, because they really are the former moats surrounding the
protecting walls incorporated in the town during its various extensions
from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The following plan of the
three canals, Heerengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht, the
beginning of which on the west side takes place in Rembrandt’s time,
coincides with the fan-shaped plan of the town, but the outer quarters,
including the Rozengracht, seem in disharmony. The reason must be sought
in the circumstance that the exploitation of these districts had to be
kept on an economical scale, since the three principal canals mentioned
above had been undertaken on so royal a scale. Therefore the existing
features were preserved: the many ditches, separating the meadows and
gardens formerly occupying this site, were simply widened into canals; and
the pathways, running between, were transformed into streets. The
peculiar characteristics of this part of the town, due to these conditions
of growth, made it into a typical quarter, known as the Jordaan; its
population has always been one of modest means, mixing little with the
town. So we see that it was very appropriate for the painter’s
retirement, after his social downfall in the late fifties.
[Plate 22. The Inn Called “de Keizers Kroon” In The Kalverstraat,
Amsterdam]
Plate 22. The Inn Called “de Keizers Kroon” In The Kalverstraat,
Amsterdam. Here Rembrandt’s collections were sold by auction, after his
bankruptcy, in 1657 and 1058. After an anonymous drawing in the Archives
in Amsterdam.
Not only the direction of its canals and streets remind one of the former
nature of this quarter, the places of amusement likewise are reminiscent
of the times when well-to-do citizens had their gardens and
pleasuregrounds amidst the meadows, before the city encroached upon them.
There were, for instance, two large gardens with mazes and fountains,
formerly the property of Amsterdam burghers, afterwards for many years an
attraction for the public. One of them, at the end of the Rozengracht,
was owned and managed by Lingelbach, the father of Johan the painter. An
inscription in the burial-book of the Westerkerk, saying that Rembrandt’s
corpse came on the 8th of October, 1669, “from the Rozengracht opposite
the Labyrinth,” painfully reminds us how for the last sad years of his
life the great painter had lived opposite this popular place of public
amusement.
[The House Of Mr. F. Banning Cocq ]
Plate 23. The House Of Mr. F. Banning Cocq (the Captain And Prominent
Person In Rembrandt’s “Night-watch”) In Amsterdam After an anonymous
drawing in the family archives of Jhr. D. de Graeff at The Hague