REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RIJN
It is surely no accident that the name of Rembrandt is familiar to
thousands who know little or nothing of his art. It has, in fact, become
so embedded in the mental consciousness of modern times, that, even as
it must have been a household word in his own day, so almost it has
grown to be in ours. And for this there seem to be two reasons. In the
very use of the word “household” there is a hint of one: the homely, in
the sense of plain and simple, and very heartfelt appeal that his
conception of the subject-matter generally makes to the imagination. But
there is another reason and a greater. It is the magnitude of his
personality as an artist. This was but dimly recognized in his own day,
in the succeeding century forgotten, and is only beginning to be fully
understood in our own times. The influence with which he fertilized art
was to prove so great, that it needed a long period of gestation before
it came to birth, and a correspondingly long period of development
before it reached maturity. Now it has grown to be recognized and felt,
until, like all the great contributions to human ideas, it is, so to
say, in the air. Unwittingly as well as by conviction the world is
conscious of it. Briefly, the nature of the influence is that it has
revolutionized our attitude toward beauty. It has not eliminated the
old idea of beauty, but supplemented it with a newer one, no less potent
and far more adapted to our modern needs. The absolutism of the classic
ideal has been overthrown by it. Art, that once was solely aristocratic,
has been expanded to include the democratic ideal. It was therefore
necessary for the world to have mastered the latter, as a principle of
life and conduct, before it could be capable of appreciating Rembrandt
to the full.
For Rembrandt’s art is the antithesis of Greek art. The Greek is founded
upon a hypothesis, upon the assumption of a possible perfection;
Rembrandt’s upon an acceptance of imperfection, upon the facts of life
in relation to things as they exist. The one is based upon an
artificially constructed absolutism, and is technically expressed
through form--form, absolute and supreme. The other, in its recognition
of the relativity of everything in life, is based upon tone, as affected
by its environment of light. The difference is fundamental both in its
technical and psychological aspect.
As long as society was conditioned by the aristocratic theory, Greek
art, and the Renaissance interpretation of its principles, sufficed;
but, with the growth and spread of the democratic, a new principle
became necessary. Rembrandt conceived it, and our own age is learning to
apply it. Our appreciation of the character of beauty has become
enlarged by a realization of the beauty of character. The latter may be
associated with beauty of form and features, though in real life it is
more often not; yet, even when it is, we have discovered that the beauty
of character is due, not to the form itself, but to the expression
inherent in the form, and that character, as revealed by expression, is
discernible also in things homely, even in the ugly. Art, in fact, has
extended its province until it more nearly corresponds with the
universal scheme of earthly conditions, wherein the good is mingled with
the bad, and the sun shines alike on the just and the unjust. Meanwhile,
even as humanity gropes toward some divine reconciliation of the
coexistence of evil with good, so art must find some means of
spiritualizing the facts of life and of idealizing the homely and ugly.
This preëminently was Rembrandt’s gift.
* * * * *
THE few known facts of Rembrandt’s life are clearly associated with his
art. Born on the 15th of July, 1606, in Leyden, he was the son of Harmen
of the Rhine, a miller in comfortable circumstances. He was sent to a
Latin school as a preparation for entrance into the University of
Leyden, that “when he became of age he might serve the city and the
republic with his knowledge.” But he was destined to serve them in
another way. Since he showed no taste for Latin and a single desire to
be an artist, he was removed from school and placed with the local
painter, Jacob van Swanenburch. He was then about twelve years old, and
after spending three years with this teacher had made such progress that
the father decided to send him to Amsterdam to study under Pieter
Lastman, whose pictures of religious subjects had made him the most
popular painter of that day.
With this master Rembrandt remained only six months. Lastman’s
influence, however, had been considerable, though scarcely in a direct
way. In fact, what he did for Rembrandt was to pass on to the latter
the influence which he himself had derived from Elsheimer during a two
years’ stay in Rome. For this German painter had made a great reputation
by treating Biblical subjects in the natural or anti-classic manner. The
scene was suggested by the Italian landscape, and the personages were
real men and women, clothed in ordinary costume of the period. It is
this translation of the Bible story into the vernacular of the day,
corresponding as it did to the motive of Lucas van Leyden in his picture
at Leyden of _The Last Judgment_, which must have been familiar to
Rembrandt, that affected the latter’s imagination.
He returned to Leyden and for seven years in his father’s house
continued a course of self-study. It was based on direct study from
life, his models being himself and his relations, and included (where
again one may trace the influence of Lucas van Leyden) the practice of
etching. The earliest date recorded of any of these products of his
needle is 1628, which appears on _An Old Woman’s Head_, _Full Face, seen
only to the Chin_, and _Bust of an Old Woman_.[B] In 1624 appeared
another dated etching, _Rembrandt, a Bust_, and the following year a
series of small plates for which he himself was the model: _Rembrandt
with an Open Mouth_; _with an Air of Grimace_; _with Haggard Eyes_, and
_Laughing_.
These prints give a remarkable clue to a phase of Rembrandt’s
personality that has not been sufficiently emphasized. They show that it
included the instinct and faculty of an actor; the consciousness that
in his body he possessed a muscular instrument capable of expressing the
emotions of the mind; and, moreover, the capacity to play upon it. This
throws a new light upon the habit, exhibited at intervals throughout his
life, of making portraits of himself and frequently in costume. The
latter particular is apt to be dismissed as a harmless pleasantry,
whereas it should rather be considered extraordinarily suggestive. For
he was not merely “dressing up,” but enacting a part in his own person;
actually realizing in his body the idea that possessed his mind. That he
could do this and needed to do it for the satisfaction of his own mental
and physical impulses, helps to explain his extraordinary facility and
power as a draftsman. For the virtue of great drawing consists in its
quality of expression, in its ability to infuse feeling into a gesture
or movement and so correlate the latter to the mood of mind, presumed to
be dominating the subject. This virtue cannot be gained at second hand
from a model; it must be inherent in the artist himself, and will be
efficient according to the degree in which the artist can feel the
emotion in himself and is capable of physically expressing it; in a
word, to the degree in which he possesses the instinct of an actor.
Viewed in this light Rembrandt’s habit of grimacing before a mirror,
dressing up and posturing, gives a most illuminating clue to the source
of his amazing versatility and capacity of expression as a draftsman.
In the same year, 1630, which produced the small prints, appeared also
two “serious” etchings of himself; also two Biblical subjects, _Jesus
Disputing with the Doctors_ and _The Presentation with the Angel_; and,
further, several fine portrait studies. In this year he moved to
Amsterdam.
He was twenty-four years old, and, as far as etching is concerned, “was
already in the peculiar situation,” I quote from Hamerton, “of an artist
who has left himself no room for improvement except in attempting art of
another kind, and in overcoming new, though possibly not greater,
difficulties.” Among the oil-paintings that he had already executed are
_St. Paul_ (Stuttgart); _St. Jerome in a Cave_ (Berlin); two portraits
of old men (Cassel); and one of a young man, resembling himself, at The
Hague. It was the fame of his portraits that, according to Orlers,
brought invitations from Amsterdam to settle there; and during the first
years of his sojourn over a shop on the Bloemgracht he executed six that
are still in existence. But the most remarkable picture of this year is
the _St. Simeon in the Temple_, now in the Gallery of The Hague. Here we
detect for the first time the power and strangeness of Rembrandt’s
imagination, displayed in the mysteriously lighted expanse of mammoth
architecture and in lustrous fabrics, and, more essentially, the
foretaste of his lifelong effort to construct a composition out of
colored light.[C] It is the first revelation of his peculiarly
individual self.
Meanwhile he had been attending the anatomy classes of the famous Dr.
Tulp, and the following year, 1632, produced the Hague picture, _The
Lesson in Anatomy_, as remarkable for clearly defined characterization
as the _St. Simeon_ had been for its imaginative treatment of light.
Both have elements of indecision, for the artist was only twenty-six,
but in them the qualities of Rembrandt’s personality are already
established.
_The Lesson_ brought him fame. Pupils flocked to his studio, clients
sought his pictures, and the ten years that followed teemed with
productivity and fortune. They cover his life with Saskia van
Uylenborch, whom he married in 1634 and lost by death in 1642. She
appears in frequent portraits and inspired many of his pictures. He
occupied houses successively on the Nieuwe Doelstraat, Binnen-Amstel,
and the Jodenbreedstraat, living simply, but indulging profusely in the
collection of works of art. This heyday of prosperity in the
companionship of Saskia is commemorated in the superb portrait of his
wife sitting upon his knee, in the Dresden Gallery.
In 1642 his fortunes received a double blow. Saskia died, and his
corporation picture, _The Sortie of the Frans Banning Cock Company_,
popularly but erroneously called “The Night Watch,” was received with
disfavor. It proved to be a turning-point in his career. Public
recognition began to wane, and financial embarrassments to increase; yet
his artistic fecundity continued, marked by more frequent examples of
landscape. Toward the end of the forties he enjoyed the sympathetic
support of the burgomaster, Jan Six, an enthusiastic lover of books and
collector of works of art, whose friendship lasted till his death in
1658. Meanwhile, about 1653, Rembrandt seems to have married the woman
who had devoted herself to his care, Hendrickje Stoffels. She died in
1656 and money troubles crowded upon him. He was declared a bankrupt;
his household goods were seized by his creditors and later sold at an
appalling sacrifice; the house in the Jodenbreedstraat also passed under
the hammer, and Rembrandt retired to a house on the Rosengracht. This
was in 1658. The house, which still exists, was a comfortable one; and
it seems probable that the eleven years during which Rembrandt lived in
it, until his death in 1669, were a time of tranquillity, as they
certainly were of continued artistic activity. This period, indeed,
produced _The Six Syndics of the Cloth Hall_ (Amsterdam), a masterpiece
of assured self-possession and complete achievement. It also was marked
with many portraits of himself, no less than four having been painted in
the last year of his life. One of them shows him blear eyed, with red
and bulbous face, but laughing, and holding his maulstick like a
scepter.[D]
* * * * *
EUGÈNE FROMENTIN, skilled alike as a man of letters and a painter,
analyzes in his “Maîtres d’Autrefois” the art of Rembrandt. The argument
has been so generally accepted, that it must be described here. It may
be compressed as follows: Fromentin discovers contradictions in the art
of Rembrandt. It is at one time so realistic, and at another so
visionary. He explains this apparent contradiction by the theory that
Rembrandt’s was a dual nature. On the one side he shared with his
fellow-artists their practicalness, direct seeing, and love of clear and
definite expression; while on the other he was a solitary dreamer, a
visionary, to whom the mystery of things made
[Illustration: THE SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH GUILD REMBRANDT
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]
chief appeal. Thus, by turns he was realist and idealist; occasionally,
as in _The Sortie_, his pictures seem to have been the battle-ground of
his two irreconcilable natures.
Fromentin calls the realist in Rembrandt the “exterior man” as
contrasted with the “interior man,” revealed in his examples of
idealism. The former he characterizes as an accomplished technician,
with certainty of hand and a keenly logical mind. “His aim is to be
comprehensible and veracious; he emulates the true colors of the
daylight; draws with a fidelity and thoroughness that, while it makes
you forget that it is drawing, itself forgets nothing. It is excellently
physiognomical. It expresses and characterizes, in their individuality,
traits, glances, attitudes, and gestures, that is to say, normal habits
of behavior and the furtive accidents of life. His execution has the
propriety, the ampleness, the high bearing, the firm tissue, the force
and conciseness that belong to passed masters in the art of fine
idiomatic expression.” The original of this last phrase is _l’art des
beaux langues_; and we may note, in passing, its significance in
connection with the context. Indeed, the whole paragraph might as
accurately characterize some fine literary production, such as would
satisfy the high standard of the French Academy. It is based upon the
clear comprehension and logic of form.
On the contrary, when Rembrandt is in the mood of idealism, Fromentin no
longer discovers in him the consummate technician. He sacrifices form to
chiaroscuro. And what of his use of chiaroscuro, so peculiar to himself
that it has come to be called by his name? Fromentin, in a beautiful
passage, first suggests the general value of chiaroscuro. Ordinarily
used, it is the art of rendering the atmosphere visible and of painting
an object enveloped in air. “But it is more than any other medium the
form of intimate sensations or ideas. It is light, vaporous, veiled,
discreet; it lends its charm to things which are concealed, invites
curiosity, adds an attraction to moral beauties, and gives a grace to
the speculation of conscience. In fine, it is concerned with sentiment,
emotion, the uncertain, the undefined and infinite; with dreams and the
ideal. And that is why it is appropriately the poetic and natural
atmosphere, which the genius of Rembrandt did not cease to inhabit.”
It was natural, therefore, that Rembrandt should bring to perfection
this method of chiaroscuro, which Fromentin describes as the art of
“enveloping everything, of immersing everything, in a bath of shadow, of
plunging into it even the light itself, in order to draw out the light
therefrom so that it shall appear more distant, more radiant; to cause
waves of shadow to revolve round lighted centers; and to modulate these
shadows, to hollow them, make them dense and yet render the obscurity
transparent, and the less obscure parts easy to penetrate; in a word, to
give to the strongest colors a kind of permeability which stops them
from being black.”
But it is Rembrandt’s peculiar characteristic that he carried the method
of chiaroscuro much further. Fromentin thus sums the matter up: He calls
him a luminarist, apologizing for the word, which, when he wrote in
1876, was still a “barbarous” one. And a luminarist he defines to be one
who conceives of light as outside of
[Illustration:
SORTIE OF THE BANNING COCK COMPANY REMBRANDT
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]
fixed laws, attaches to it an extraordinary meaning, and makes great
sacrifices for it. And, he adds, “if such is the meaning of this newly
coined word, Rembrandt is at once defined and judged, for the word
expresses an idea difficult to render, but a true idea, a rare eulogy
and a criticism.”
Briefly, then, Fromentin’s argument is this: Rembrandt in his ideal
moods essayed to use light as the actual material out of which to
construct form; he composed in light. The result was admirable, when the
character of the subject justified such treatment; but open to serious
criticism when it did not. The famous instance of the latter, in
Fromentin’s judgment, is _The Sortie_ or “Night Watch.”
“Rembrandt had to represent a company of men-at-arms. It would have been
easy enough to tell us what they were going to do; but he has told us so
negligently, that people are still unable to comprehend it, even in
Amsterdam. He had to paint some likenesses, they are doubtful; some
characteristic costumes, they are for the most part apocryphal; a
picturesque effect, and this effect is such that the picture becomes
undecipherable. The subject, the personages and details have disappeared
in the shadowy phantasmagoria of the palette. Ordinarily Rembrandt
excels in rendering light, he is marvelous in the art of painting an
imaginary subject (_fiction_); his habit is to think, his master faculty
is the expression of light. But here imagination is out of place, life
is wanting, and the thought atones for nothing. As for the light, it is
unnatural, unquiet, and artificial; it radiates from the inside to the
outside, it dissolves the objects that it illuminates. I see some focal
spots of brilliance, but I see nothing illuminated; the light is neither
beautiful, true, nor reasonable (_motivée_).”
Before discussing this judgment let us note Fromentin’s approval of
Rembrandt’s use of light--in the case of subjects that seem to him to
justify it. He instances particularly _The Supper at Emmaus_ and _The
Good Samaritan_, both in the Louvre. He speaks with fine sympathy of the
original and infinitely human conception of Christ in the former
picture, while upon the technique of the latter he comments as follows:
“The canvas is enveloped in smoke (_enfumée_), all impregnated with
somber golds, very rich in depth and, above all, very grave. The
material is muddy, yet transparent; the brushwork heavy, yet subtle;
hesitating and resolute; labored and free; very unequal, uncertain,
vague in some parts, astonishingly precise in others. No contour
appears, not an accent added in the way of routine. There is evident an
extreme timidity, which is not the result of ignorance and proceeds, one
would say, from the fear of being banal or from the price which the
thinker attaches to the immediate and direct expression of life. The
objects have a structure that seems to exist in itself, almost without
the help of formulas, rendering, without any means that you can seize
upon, the uncertainties of nature. There are some nude limbs and feet of
irreproachable construction--moreover, ‘style.’ In the pale, pinched,
groaning visage of the wounded man, there is nothing save expression,
something that comes from the soul, from within outward; tonelessness
(_atonie_), suffering; as it were, the sad joy of collecting one’s self
when one feels about to die. Not a contortion, not a trait that
overreaches moderation, not a touch in this rendering of the
inexpressible that is not pathetic and restrained; everything dictated
by profound emotion and interpreted by means altogether extraordinary.”
And, adds Fromentin: “Examine other painters of sentiment, of
physiognomy and characterization, the men of scrupulous observation or
of _verve_. Take account of their intentions; study their scrutiny,
measure their domain, weigh well their language, and ask yourself, if
anywhere you perceive an equal intimacy in the expression of a visage,
an emotion of this nature, such ingenuity in the manner of feeling;
anything, in a word, which is as delicate to conceive, as delicate to
say, and is said in terms more original, more exquisite, or more
perfect.”
Nothing else, I suppose, has ever been written about this phase of
Rembrandt’s art that is at once so fine in thought and diction, so
enlightening, and so memorable. For one here meets in union the trained
thinker and practised writer and the painter; thus getting much more
than the painter’s exclusive point of view, and at the same time the
latter, interpreted by the painter at first hand. The gist of it is
that, when the subject involved an idea, Rembrandt was not only
justified in sacrificing the corporeal to the incorporeal, but was
master of a technique that could express the idea conclusively and with
supreme emotional appeal.
In conclusion, Fromentin considers that the whole life of Rembrandt
represents a struggle between the two sides of his nature. The earliest
battle-ground was _The Sortie_, from which, owing to the nature of the
problem, he came off worsted. But did he ever succeed in reconciling the
“exterior” and the “interior” man? If ever, Fromentin concludes, surely
in _The Syndics_, which, in a word, is a work of imagination and yet of
real life.
* * * * *
THE whole exposition of Fromentin’s argument, from which these fragments
have been gathered, is worth careful study, particularly because of the
constructive nature of the criticism. In its combination of technical
information and logical point of view, in its subtlety and human
sympathy, it affords a model for the method of approaching the serious
examination of a great artist’s work. One may acknowledge its value and
the benefit derived from it, without subscribing entirely to its
conclusions. It may be possible to feel that it has the defect, if one
is to find a single word for it, of excessive concentration. It centers
too exclusively around one picture, _The Sortie of the Banning Cock
Company_.
This picture has suffered from too much exploitation. It has been
praised “not wisely but too well” by artists and has been worshiped by
the public. Fromentin may have approached it with undue expectations; at
any rate, he found himself disappointed; and, being at variance with the
general judgment, felt the need of justifying his own attitude. He has
done it so exhaustively as to warp his own judgment, until what there is
of weakness in the picture has become almost an obsession with him. It
is never absent from his thoughts, and continually peeps in on one page
after another, and mingles with the judgment of other pictures.
Fromentin has used it as a pivot around which to swing his whole
appreciation of Rembrandt; and, more than this, has himself been sucked
into the vortex of his own revolving argument. It is an expedient
scarcely to be warranted by breadth of criticism to select one picture
of any artist as a focusing-point for a consideration of his whole work,
and least of all in the case of an artist so universal as Rembrandt.
Moreover, Fromentin does not persuade us that he had a very wide
acquaintance with the master’s work. He knew his Louvre well; grew up
with it, and had become habituated to it and fixed in the impressions he
had derived. Later in life he made the acquaintance of the National
Gallery and visited Dresden. Then he makes the pilgrimage to Holland. He
first reaches The Hague, where _The Lesson in Anatomy_ fails to satisfy
his expectations. He is alive to its excellence in parts, but does not
find the strength and character of two or three of the heads sustained
throughout the canvas. He feels that an unreasonable amount of adulation
has been lavished on the picture. It arouses his antagonism and piques
in him the critical vein. Then an interval in his approach to Rembrandt
ensues. He alights at Haarlem and notes with what definitive skill and
clearness of comprehension Frans Hals treated the corporation subject.
Fresh from these impressions, he finds himself in front of Rembrandt’s
treatment of a corresponding theme. By contrast it seems to him a work
of confused motives and manifold uncertainties. Yet how extravagantly it
has been lauded! Like _The Lesson in Anatomy_, _The Sortie of the
Banning Cock Company_ has been prejudiced by uncritical applause. The
critic in Fromentin is now thoroughly roused. With every wish to be
fair to Rembrandt, he proceeds to build upon these two pictures a fabric
of constructive and destructive criticism. His faculties are narrowed to
a focus spot of concentrated heat, are swept into the ardor of their
centripetal momentum, and become caught up in the subtleties of their
own compressed invention. He elaborates a theory, and into its compact
limits would squeeze the genius of Rembrandt.
Further, what kind of mind did Fromentin bring to bear upon this
examination? A generous one, desirous of being broad; but a Frenchman’s
and an Academician’s; one, that is to say, which clings to logic and
bases its expression upon form. It exhibits and demands clarity of
reasoning; declares itself in refined exactness. It knew of
Impressionism, yet was too old in its convictions, too fixed in earlier
traditions, to comprehend it. But, since the day when Fromentin’s mind
was in the forming, the world’s point of view toward art, even one may
say toward life, has changed; and its attitude toward the manner of
expression has progressed, until it has come back to Rembrandt with a
new and more intimate comprehension. It recognizes him as an
Impressionist of sensations and tries to judge him by what we now know
and feel about Impressionism.
Briefly, we have learned that there may be something in art more
valuable than the record of a person, place, or incident, and this is,
the impression of it conceived and rendered by the artist; that, through
this interpretation, the place, person, or incident becomes illuminated,
more vitally represented. How, for example, can Bartholdi’s
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH BAS REMBRANDT
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]
Statue of Liberty compare with the interpretation of the idea evolved by
such a man as Lincoln? The idea thus logically and formally shaped in
the Statue will not even bear comparison with that which is expressed by
the spontaneous utterance of some poor emigrant, as he finds his foot at
last planted on the free soil of his imaginings. In life, as in art, the
real thing to us is what we feel about it; in Rembrandt’s art, what _he_
feels about his subject and makes _us_ feel.
Then, again, we have discovered that often we are made to feel most
deeply, not by detailed statement, but by suggestion: in the case of a
speaker, perhaps by a momentary gesture, or play of features, by a
sudden inflection of the voice, or a pause in speech, and the occasional
accent of a word or sentence; in the case of a writer, often as much by
what he leaves unsaid, by the thought that is veiled behind the
statement, by the choice and emphasis of certain features of his record.
Further, we may have learned to find occasional value even in
uncertainty or indecision. We may sometimes tire of, and possibly
distrust, the world’s tendency to “get things down fine.” The latter may
seem to imply that the thing itself is small, or that there is smallness
in the vision of the man who thus approaches life. We may be conscious
of life itself as an aggregate of moments of brilliant realization and
more frequent half-tones, enveloped in a sea of shadow; and may reach
nearer to the heart and meaning of it by welcoming its mystery.
Surely something of this sort was Rembrandt’s attitude toward life, and
therefore his point of view toward art. He has been called unlearned,
because he had small taste for Latin and no scholastic acquisitions.
But in the wisdom of life, as drawn from life itself and distilled
through the brain and temperament of one who searched life deeply and
lived his own life ardently, he has had few equals, at least among
artists. For the explanation of Rembrandt is that to him life presented
itself as an _idea_.
Thus he is without a rival in the sympathetic rendering of old age. He
saw more than the exterior of it; he penetrated into its psychology.
For--how shall I express it?--the fruit of living is experience, and
experience tends more and more to lose sight of the concrete in the
abstract, to replace the substance of the form with the higher reality
of the idea. The young man, as he ceases to depend upon the
ministrations of the mother, enshrines her in a personal idea of
motherhood; the old lover rediscovers the bride of his youth in the idea
with which time has enveloped the wife. The idea is the aureole or
nimbus that gathers about the form and proclaims its sanctity. It is the
idea, then, that Rembrandt, the artist of ideas, the searcher after the
higher reality inherent in form, discovered in old age.
On the other hand, while Rembrandt exalted the idea above the substance,
he was not indifferent to form. No great artist whose domain is the
world of sight can be.
Indeed, the wider the acquaintance with the master goes, whether in the
galleries throughout Europe, or through the examples which occasionally
emerge from private collections, as in the recent extraordinary display
in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the more one is impressed
not only with Rembrandt’s feeling for form, but also with his amazing
power of rendering it.
Sometimes, as in the marvelously detailed _Portrait of Elizabeth Bas_
(Amsterdam), the impression he derived of the original was one which he
could render only by enforcing the bulk and character and precision of
form. This lady, though not of gentle birth, was, as the widow of
Admiral Swartenhout, a figure in society. This much we know from the
written record; the rest is recorded in the portrait. As Rembrandt saw
her, she was a woman of determined personality; a narrow and rigid
believer in her own importance, and a stickler for its recognition; an
ingrained precisionist, as upright as her backbone and as set in
formalism as her corseted figure. Yet the flesh of her face and hands
has the dimpled softness and delicate contours of well-preserved old
age. She is fully conscious of prerogatives, but her hardness has been
made gracious by the kindly touch of time. All this, no doubt, was
written in detail on her ample person, and Rembrandt, feeling the
intimate value of its completeness, has detailed it in the portrait.
Or take another example of the record of an impression, _The Portrait of
Hendrickje Stoffels_ in the Berlin Gallery. The devotion of this woman
had stayed the artist in his trials, and her exuberant youth had put
fresh force into his courage. He had learned to depend upon her watchful
solicitude, to lean upon her abundant vitality, and to warm his
imagination in the glow of her physical ardor. In the portrait he wraps
her strong figure in the rich grandeur of a mantle that burns with
wonderful brown lights above an under-robe of golden cream, while a
flash of crimson glows in her brown hair, and a golden warmth is exhaled
from the full, firm features and hovers above the ripe harvest of her
bosom. The portrait is an artist’s apotheosis of the glory and the
benediction of physical vitality; and, let us not forget, in the
strength of this woman’s companionship Rembrandt achieved his
masterpiece of austere and virile intellectuality--_The Syndics of the
Cloth Workers’ Guild_.
And so we might take one by one the pictures of this master, and,
whether the impression that it records is drawn mainly from the exterior
of its subject or from a penetration of the character or soul within,
whether it be the expression of the soul of some fact of Bible story, no
matter what the degree of idealism involved, every time it is form or
some interpretation thereof, that is the foundation of the picture. Not
form, however, for its own sake, for the purpose of rendering it in its
logical and reasoned completeness or of exploiting the master’s
efficiency in doing what every student aspires, and many can learn, to
do; but form so felt, so rendered, that what we are made conscious of is
not alone the physical sense of form, but its abstract significance; in
a word, if I may say so, the soul of form, as from time to time it is
used to interpret some one or other of the artist’s impressions.
You cannot pass from one to the other of the thirty-seven examples of
Rembrandt in the exhibition that, as I write, is being held in the
galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, or travel round the galleries of
Europe, intent upon the wealth of Rembrandts that they contain, without
reaching a conviction, that grows more and more assured, of the profound
knowledge and feeling for form
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS REMBRANDT
BERLIN GALLERY]
that Rembrandt possessed and communicates. He may reveal clearly but a
portion of a figure, veiling or obscuring the rest; but what is revealed
is sufficient for the physical appreciation of the whole figure, and
enforces the physical significance, while the spiritual significance is
profoundly increased by the demand that has been made upon our
imagination. After long study one comes to believe, not only that
Rembrandt treated form differently from other artists, which no one, I
suppose, denies; but also that no other artist has ever treated it with
such a mingling of power and subtlety, with so fine and sure a reliance
upon its physical qualities, and yet with so marvelous a capacity to
interpret its spiritual significance.
Almost similar in motive is Rembrandt’s use of color. He is not a
colorist in the sense that the great Venetians were, for they extolled
the glory of local color--the actual splendor of hue with which they
clothed their radiant figures and wove about them a triumphant
orchestration. This also is an abstract use of color, involving a
consciousness and suggestion of the effect that color as color has upon
the imagination. But Rembrandt went further. He, too, had the love of
beautiful fabrics, bought them freely, and as freely used them on his
models. But here he parts company with the Venetians; for by this time
he has ceased to think of the fabric or its color as something of value
in itself. It has become merged in the impression that he has formed of
the whole subject. It may occupy a large or small part in the total
impression; that is as it may be; but henceforth it is only contributory
to the physical and spiritual sensations that he has received and is
set upon interpreting. Thus he is at no pains to preserve the material
integrity of the local color; he uses it as he does form: extracting
from it this or that, here forcing or there veiling its emphasis,
plunging much of it in shadow. Therefore, even as his treatment of form
has proved an enigma to some critics, so some hesitate to call him a
colorist. After the manner of the Venetians, I repeat, he is not. But
need theirs be the only manner of the colorist?
Rembrandt used color as he used form, as a symbol of expression; and, to
repeat, what he sought to express was the impression that the form and
color had aroused in his imagination. When the impression was derived
merely from the externals of form, he would elaborate in detail the
retinal impression and in such cases usually preserve the integrity of
the local color. But it was otherwise when the impression was extracted
from the soul of the subject, whether the latter were an individual
whose portrait he was painting, or a Biblical incident the significance
of which he was elaborating out of his own inner consciousness of its
meaning. For then he is not representing things as he sees them, but
recreating the impression that they have made in his imagination. The
local color becomes merged in the color of his imagination; gathers
brilliance from its certainties, fades into the half-lights of its
questionings, is threaded through and through with strands of
discrimination, and plunged in the mystery of the unknowable.
* * * * *
Finally, in this use of form and color, Rembrandt is nearer to what is
most modern in the art of to-day than has been generally recognized. For
of late Impressionism has entered on a new development. During some
time it was intent upon a more vivid and truthful representation of the
facts of life. It sat at the feet of Velasquez, trying to do again what
he did so supremely well. It did not succeed in equaling his authority,
for the sufficient reason that an imitator never rivals the master; but
at the same time it added something to what Velasquez stands for. Helped
by science, it has carried further than he did the study of light in the
variety and quality of its manifestations, and has gained, especially in
landscape, an instrument for interpreting sentiment and moods of
temperament. In the intellectual analysis of the appearance of nature
Velasquez said the last word; and now in the domain of emotion and of
spiritual expression, as interpreted by the representation of nature,
there is nothing further to be said. In a word, the ideal of graphic
art, as based upon the representation of nature, which since the
thirteenth century has occupied the artists of the Western world, is now
found to have reached a development beyond which no further development
is possible. As a commentary upon this is the development of
photography, which along the line of representation vies with painting.
Certain original minds,[E] therefore, have realized the need of a new
ideal, a new motive with which to refertilize their art. They are
seeking to discover it in a new conception of Impressionism. Their
position, in effect, is this: Need the impression that is derived from
nature be limited by the necessities of naturalistic representation? Can
it not free itself from the liability of being judged by the standard
of what it is derived from, and claim to be enjoyed for its own abstract
qualities of form and color? May it not detach itself more freely from
the concrete, and attain nearer to the abstract? Are there not further
possibilities in the conception of form and color as symbols?
The new movement, for such it has grown to be, in France, Germany,
Austria, and England, has come by way of the East. The harvest of a
century of Eastern exploration, ripened during the last fifty years by
an increasing intimacy with the art of Egypt, China, Korea, Japan,
India, and Mesopotamia, is at length being stored. We are beginning to
realize the Oriental conception of art as decoration, relying upon the
abstract qualities of form and color, and using them, not as vehicles of
natural representation, but as symbols, appealing freely, without
concrete reference, to the imagination. To repeat, these pioneers of the
new movement find themselves at the point where the Renaissance started
in the thirteenth century. The latter broke away from the remnant of the
Oriental ideal, left in Byzantine art, to conquer a new world of natural
representation, and its evolution has been completed. The new movement
has recovered the Oriental standpoint from which to attempt the conquest
of a new ideal. It is a movement, at present, mainly of experiment, and
necessarily so. For all of us, whether artists or laymen, are as yet too
much under the influence of centuries of inherited tradition to be able
to free ourselves from the consciousness of what it stands for.
The artist of our own time whose intuition steered him first in the
direction of this new conception and use of form and color is Whistler;
and among the potent influences of his own life was Rembrandt. That the
latter was habitually desirous of evading the concrete significance of
form is contradicted by innumerable pictures; but that in some he did
evade it, even as Whistler did in his _Nocturnes_, is undeniable.
Moreover, Rembrandt showed less regard for the traditional use of form
and color than any artist up to our own day. With all his sense of its
significance, he used it with the complete freedom of personal
expression; and so enveloped it in the half-lights and obscurities of an
atmosphere of his own invention, that, while the picture represents an
incident, it contradicts the idea of material representation. It is, to
a more abstract degree than has been reached by any other Caucasian
artist, the record of a spiritual impression, based on the symbolic use
of form and color. It approaches the brink of that still further
detachment from the necessities of natural representation that
characterizes the New Thought in modern art.