REMBRANDT
After the death of Holbein, artists in the north of Europe passed
through troublous times till the end of the sixteenth century. France
and the Netherlands were devastated by wars. You may remember that
the Netherlands had belonged in the fifteenth century to the Dukes
of Burgundy? Through the marriage of the only daughter of the last
Duke, these territories passed into the possession of the King of Spain,
who remained a Catholic, whilst the northern portion of the Netherlands
became sturdily Protestant. Their struggle, under the leadership of
William the Silent, against the yoke of Spain, is one of the stirring
pages of history. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, seven
of the northern states of the Netherlands, of which Holland was the
chief, had emerged as practically independent. The southern portion
of the Netherlands, including the old province of Flanders, remained
Catholic and was governed by a Spanish Prince who held his court at
Brussels.
When peace came at last, there was a remarkable outburst of painting
in each of the two countries. Rubens was the master painter in Flanders.
Of him and of his pupil Van Dyck we shall hear more in the next chapter.
In Holland there was a yet more wide-spread activity. Indomitable
perseverance had been needed for so small a country to throw off the
rule of a great power like Spain. The long struggle seems to have called
into being a kindred spirit manifesting itself in every branch of the
national life. Dutch merchants, Dutch fishermen, and Dutch colonizers
made themselves felt as a force throughout the world. The spirit by
which Dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the
qualities which brought them to the front rank in art. There were
literally hundreds of painters in Holland, few of them bad. That does
not mean that all Dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging
to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily
view into things of rare beauty, or the imagination of a Tintoret that
creates and depicts scenes undreamt of before by man. Many painted
the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no
glamour and no transforming touch. When we see their pictures, our
eyes are not opened to new effects. We continue to see and to feel
as we did before, but we admire the honest work, the pleasant colour,
and the efficiency of the painters. In default of Raphaels, Giorgiones,
and Titians, we should be pleased to hang upon our walls works such
as those. But towering above the other artists of Holland, great and
small, was one Dutchman, Rembrandt, who holds his own with the greatest
of the world.
He was born in 1606, the son of a miller at Leyden, who gave him the
best teaching there to be had. Soon he became a good painter of
likenesses, and orders for portraits began to stream in upon him from
the citizens of his native town. These he executed well, but his heart
was not wrapped up in the portrayal of character as John Van Eyck's
had been. Neither was it in the drawing of delicate and beautiful lines
that he wished to excel, as did Holbein and Raphael. He was the
dramatist of painting, a man who would rather paint some one person
ten times over in the character of somebody else, high priest, king,
warrior, or buffoon, than once thoroughly in his own. But when people
ordered portraits of themselves they wanted good likenesses, and
Rembrandt was happy to supply them. At first it was only when he was
working at home to please himself that he indulged his picturesque
gift. He painted his father, his mother, and himself over and over
again, but in each picture he tried some experiment with expression,
or a new pose, or a strange effect of lighting, transforming the general
aspect of the original. His own face did as well as any other to
experiment with; none could be offended with the result, and it was
always to be had without paying a model's price for the sitting. Thus
all through his life, from twenty-two to sixty-three, we can follow
the growth of his art with the transformation of his body, in the long
series of pictures of his single self.
More than any artist that had gone before him, Rembrandt was fascinated
by the problem of light. The brightest patch of white on a canvas will
look black if you hold it up against the sky. How, then, can the fire
of sunshine be depicted at all? Experience shows that it can only be
suggested by contrast with shadows almost black. But absolutely black
shadows would not be beautiful. Fancy a picture in which the shadows
were as black as well-polished boots! Rembrandt had to find out how
to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which
shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would
decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject. That was no easy
problem, and he had to solve it for himself. It was his life's work.
He applied his new idea in the painting of portraits and in subject
pictures, chiefly illustrative of dramatic incidents in Bible history,
for the same quality in him that made him love the flare of light,
made him also love the dramatic in life.
Rembrandt's mother was a Protestant, who brought up her son with a
thorough knowledge of the Scripture stories, and it was the Bible that
remained to the end of his life one of the few books he had in his
house. The dramatic situations that he loved were there in plenty.
Over and over again he painted the Nativity of Christ. Sometimes the
Baby is in a tiny Dutch cradle with its face just peeping out, and
the shepherds adoring it by candle-light. Often he painted scenes from
the Old Testament; such as Isaac blessing Esau and Jacob, who are shown
as two little Dutch children. Simeon receiving the Infant Christ in
the Temple is a favourite subject, because of the varied effects that
could be produced by the gloom of the church and the light on the figure
of the High Priest. These, and many other beautiful pictures, were
studies painted for the increase of the artist's own knowledge, not
orders from citizens of Leyden, or of Amsterdam, to which capital he
moved in 1630. At the same time he was coming more and more into demand
as a portrait-painter. These were days in which he made money fast,
and spent it faster. He had a craving to surround himself with beautiful
works of art and beautiful objects of all kinds that should take him
away from the dunes and canals into a world of romance within his own
house. He disliked the stiff Dutch clothes and the great starched white
ruffs worn by the women of the day. He had to paint them in his
portraits; but when he painted his beautiful wife, Saskia, she is
decked in embroideries and soft shimmering stuffs. Wonderful clasps
and brooches fasten her clothes. Her hair is dressed with gold chains,
and great strings of pearls hang from her neck and arms. Rembrandt
makes the light sparkle on the diamonds and glimmer on the pearls.
Sometimes he adorns her with flowers and paints her as Flora. Again,
she is fastening a jewel in her hair, and Rembrandt himself stands
by with a rope of pearls for her to don. All these jewels and rich
materials belonged to him. He also bought antique marbles, pictures
by Giorgione and Titian, engravings by Durer, and four volumes of
Raphael's drawings, besides many other beautiful works of art.
These were splendid years, years in which he was valued by his
contemporaries for the work he did for them, and years in which every
picture he painted for himself gave him fresh experience. A picture
of the anatomy class of a famous physician had been among the first
with which Rembrandt made a great public success. Every face in it--and
there were eight living faces--was a masterpiece of portraiture, and
all were fitly grouped and united in the rapt attention with which
they followed the demonstration of their teacher.
In 1642 he received an order to paint a large picture of one of the
companies of the City Guard of Amsterdam. According to the custom of
the day, each person portrayed in the picture contributed his equal
share towards the cost of the whole, and in return expected his place
in it to be as conspicuous as that of anybody else. Such groups were
common in Holland in the seventeenth century. The towns were proud
of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see
themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure
of office. But Rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and
every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence,
although such was the custom to which even Franz Hals' brush had yielded
full compliance. For his magnificent picture of the City Guard,
Rembrandt chose the moment when the drums had just been sounded as
an order for the men to form into line behind their chief officers'
march-forth. They are coming out from a dark building into the full
sunshine of the street. All in a bustle, some look at their fire-arms,
some lift their lances, and some cock their guns. The sunshine falls
full upon the captain and the lieutenant beside him, but the background
is so dark that several of the seventeen figures are almost lost to
view. A few of the heads are turned in such a way that only half the
face is seen, and no doubt as likenesses some of them were deficient.
Rembrandt was not thinking of the seventeen men individually. He
conceived the picture as a whole, with its strong light and shade,
the picturesque crossing lines of the lances, and the natural array
of the figures. By wiseacres, the picture was said to represent a scene
at night, lit by torch-light, and was actually called the 'Night
Watch,' though the shadow of the captain's hand is of the size of the
hand itself, and not greater, being cast by the sun. Later generations
have valued it as one of the unsurpassed pictures in the world; but
it is said that contemporary Dutch feeling waxed high against Rembrandt
for having dealt in this supremely artistic manner with an order for
seventeen portraits, and that he suffered severely in consequence.
Certainly he had fewer orders. The prosperous class abandoned him.
His pictures remained unsold, and his revenue dwindled.
Rembrandt was thirty-six years of age and at the very height of his
powers, at the time of the failure of this his greatest picture. His
mature style of painting continued to displease his contemporaries,
who preferred the work of less innovating artists who painted good
likenesses smoothly. Every year his treatment became rougher and
bolder. He transformed portraits of stolid Dutch burgomasters into
pictures of fantastic beauty; but the likeness suffered, and the
burgomasters were dissatisfied. Their conservative taste preferred
the smooth surface and minute treatment of detail which had been
traditional in the Low Countries since the days of the Van Eycks. Year
after year more of their patronage was transferred to other painters,
who pandered to their preferences and had less of the genius that forced
Rembrandt to work out his own ideal, whether it brought him prosperity
or ruin. These painters flourished, while Rembrandt sank into ever
greater disrepute.
It is certain, too, that he had been almost childishly reckless in
expenditure on artistic and beautiful things which were unnecessary
to his art and beyond his means, although those for a while had been
abundant. At the time of the failure of the 'Night Watch,' his wife
Saskia died, leaving him their little son, Titus, a beautiful child.
Through ever-darkening days, for the next fifteen years, he continued
to paint with increasing power. It is to this later period that our
picture of the 'Man in Armour' belongs.
[Illustration: A MAN IN ARMOUR
From the picture by Rembrandt, in the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow]
The picture is not a portrait, but rather a study of light upon armour.
No man came to Rembrandt and asked to be painted like that; but
Rembrandt saw in his mind's eye a great effect--a fine knightly face
beneath a shadowing helmet and set off against a sombre background.
A picture such as this is a work of the imagination in the same sense
as the 'Saint George and the Dragon' of Tintoret. It was an effect
that only Rembrandt could see, painted as only he could paint it. The
strongest light falls upon the breastplate, the next strongest upon
the helmet, and the ear-ring is there to catch another gleam. When
you look at the picture closely, you can see that the lights are laid
on (we might almost say 'buttered on') with thick white paint. More
than once Rembrandt painted armour for the sake of the effects of light.
In one of the portraits of himself he wears a helmet, and he painted
his brother similarly adorned. A picture of a person wearing the same
armour as in the Glasgow picture is in St. Petersburg, but the figure
is turned in a slightly different direction and reflects the light
differently. It is called 'Pallas Athene,' and was no doubt painted
at the same time as ours; but the person, whether named Pallas Athene
or knight, was but a peg upon which to hang the armour for the sake
of the light shining on it.
Rembrandt was a typical Dutch worker all his life. Besides the great
number of pictures that have come down to us, we have about three
thousand of his drawings, and his etchings are very numerous and fine.
I wonder if you know how prints are made? There are, broadly speaking,
two different processes. You can take a block of wood and cut away
the substance around the lines of the design. Then when you cover with
ink the raised surface of wood that is left and press the paper upon
it, the design prints off in black where the ink is but the paper remains
white where the hollows are. This is the method called wood-cutting,
which is still in use for book illustrations.
In the other process, the design is ploughed into a metal plate, the
lines being made deep enough to hold ink, and varying in width according
to the strength desired in the print. You then fill the grooves with
ink, wiping the flat surface clean, so that when the paper is pressed
against the plate and into the furrows, the lines print black, out
of the furrows, and the rest remains white.
There are several ways of making these furrows in a metal plate, but
the chief are two. The first is to plough into the metal with a sharp
steel instrument called a burin. The second is to bite them out with
an acid. This is the process of etching with which Rembrandt did his
matchless work. He varnished a copper plate with black varnish. With
a needle he scratched upon it his design, which looked light where
the needle had revealed the copper. Then the whole plate was put into
a bath of acid, which ate away the metal, and so bit into the lines,
but had no effect upon the varnish. When he wanted the lines to be
blacker in certain places, he had to varnish the whole rest of the
plate again, and put it back into the bath of acid. The lines that
had been subjected to the second biting were deeper than those that
had been bitten only once.
The number of plates etched by Rembrandt was great, at least two
hundred; some say four hundred. Their subjects are very
various--momentary impressions of picturesque figures, Scriptural
scenes, portraits, groups of common people, landscapes, and whatever
happened to engage the artist's fancy, for an etching can be very
quickly done, and is well suited to record a fleeting impression.
Thousands of the prints still exist, and even some of the original
plates in a very worn-down condition.
In spite of the quantity and quality of Rembrandt's work, he was unable
to recover his prosperity. He had moved into a fine house when he
married Saskia, and was never able to pay off the debts contracted
at that time. Things went from bad to worse, until at last, in 1656,
when Rembrandt was fifty, he was declared bankrupt, and everything
he possessed in the world was sold. We have an inventory of the gorgeous
pictures, the armour, the sculptures, and the jewels and dresses that
had belonged to Saskia. His son Titus retained a little of his mother's
money, and set up as an art dealer in order to help his father.
It is a truly dreary scene, yet Rembrandt still continued to paint,
because painting was to him the very breath of life. He painted Titus
over and over again looking like a young prince. In these later years
the portraits of himself increase in number, as if because of the lack
of other models. When we see him old, haggard, and poor in his worn
brown painting-clothes, it hardly seems possible that he can be the
same Rembrandt as the gay, frolicking man in a plumed hat, holding
out the pearls for Saskia.
In his old age he received one more large order from a group of six
drapers of Amsterdam for their portraits. It has been said that the
lesson of the miscalled 'Night Watch' had been branded into his soul
by misfortune. What is certain is that, while in this picture he
purposely returned to the triumphs of portraiture of his youth, he
did not give up the artistic ideals of his middle life. He gave his
sitters an equal importance in position and lighting, and at the same
time painted a picture artistically satisfying. Not one of the six
men could have had any fault to find with the way in which he was
portrayed. Each looks equally prominent in vivid life. Yet they are
not a row of six individual men, but an organic group held together
you hardly know how. At last you realize that all but one are looking
at you. _You_ are the unifying centre that brings the whole picture
together, the bond without which, metaphorically speaking, it would
fall to pieces.
This picture of six men in plain black clothes and black hats, sitting
around a table, is by some considered the culmination of Rembrandt's
art. It shows that, in spite of misfortune and failure, his ardour
for new artistic achievement remained with him to the end.
In 1662 Rembrandt seems to have paid a brief and unnoticed visit to
England. If Charles II. had heard of him and made him his court painter,
we might have had an unrivalled series of portraits of court beauties
by his hand instead of by that of Sir Peter Lely. As it was, a hasty
sketch of old St. Paul's Cathedral, four years before it was burnt
down, is the sole trace left of his visit.
The story of his old age is dreary. Even Titus died a few months before
his father, leaving him alone in the world. In the autumn of 1669 he
himself passed away, leaving behind him his painting-clothes, his
paint-brushes, and nothing else, save a name destined to an immortality
which his contemporaries little foresaw. All else had gone: his wife,
his child, his treasures, and his early vogue among the Dutchmen of
his time.
The last picture of all was a portrait of himself, in the same attitude
as his first, but disillusioned and tragic, with furrowed lines and
white hair. No one cared whether he died or not, and it is recorded
that after his death pictures by him could be bought for sixpence.
Thus ended the life of one of the world's supremely great painters.