_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._
A noble portrait. Rembrandt was a painter who reverenced old age, and
gave its dignity and beauty to faces the least promising. We may notice
especially the pathetic eyes,--with an expression at once so living
and so sorrowful, and the character in the hands which Rembrandt never
failed to give his sitters. The old lady wears a large white ruff,
"evidently clinging to the costume of her earlier years, for ruffs had
long been out of fashion at the time when the picture was painted." The
picture has been known as the Burgomaster's Wife, but this description
is without authority or probability. There is another portrait of
the same old lady in Lord Wantage's possession (No. 15 in the Academy
Exhibition, 1899). Lord Wantage's picture is dated 1661.
The two magnificent pictures just described, which hold their own
triumphantly even on a wall of masterpieces,[251] were formerly in
possession of Sir William Middleton, Bart., great-uncle to Lady de
Saumarez, and were exhibited at the British Institution in 1858. Since
that date they had been lost to sight until they were purchased for
the National Gallery in 1899.[252] They are believed to have been in
possession of the Lee family, Lady de Saumarez's ancestors, from the
time that they were painted, but they may have come into the family
with a certain John van Enkoren, a Dutch gentleman, who married a
second cousin of Sir William Middleton.