DAYS OF DECLINE
He was then starting upon the downward course which was leading him to
utter ruin. In the course of the following years, Fashion, who had
decreed that he was the one painter to patronise, shook her fickle wings
and flew off to others, and thenceforth decried her former favourite
with the more ignorant dispraise because of her equally ignorant
p[ae]ans in the past.
It was in vain that the Stathouder continued his patronage, giving him a
commission for two pictures, "The Circumcision" and "The Adoration of
the Shepherds," for which, on the twenty-ninth of September 1646, he
paid the sum of 2400 florins, just double what he had paid before. It
was in vain that the rising artists could not fail to perceive his
transcendent merits, and that pupils from all Europe sought him out,
Michiel Willemans, Ulric Mayr, and Franz Wulfhagen, Christoph Paudiss,
Juriaen Avens, Bernard Keilh, Cornelis Drost, Nicholas Maes, Carel
Fabritius, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and many more. He had ceased,
apparently, to attract the public. At any rate, though his productive
energy was unabated, his affairs grew ever more and more involved.
In 1647, Saskia's relations began to be alarmed, demanding that the
valuation of the property at the date of her death should be ascertained
without delay, and Rembrandt replied that to the best of his belief it
had been 40,750 florins. It is a little difficult to understand what
right they had to formulate this demand, since, according to the will,
the property was virtually Rembrandt's own, unless he married again, and
this, to all appearance, he had, at that time, no idea of doing, though
rumours to the contrary may well have reached their ears. A certain
Geertje Dircx, the widow of one Abraham Cl[ae]sz, who had been engaged,
probably not long after Saskia's death, as nurse to the infant Titus,
who was always delicate, came in time to hope that she might aspire to
rank as his step-mother; on January 24th, 1648, she made her will,
neglecting the relations we know her to have had and bequeathing
everything she legally could to Titus. Within two years, however, on
October 1st, 1649, she repudiated her will, gave Rembrandt warning, and
brought against him the equivalent of an action for breach of promise of
marriage, to which he replied by an affidavit denying that their
relations had ever been other than those of master and servant. In fact,
her pretensions seem to have been only the delusions of her disordered
brain, for in the course of the next year, 1650, she had to be removed
and placed in confinement in a madhouse at Gouda, for which Rembrandt
advanced the expenses, and, needless to say, never got them back.
We have not, moreover, far to seek for a reason for her explosion of
temper in 1649 if she really believed her master meant to marry her, for
on that very same October 1st, in reference to some otherwise
unimportant disturbances of the neighbourhood by a drunken man, we find
a certain Hendrickje Stoffels, of Ransdorp, in Westphalia, giving
evidence on Rembrandt's behalf. Of the subsequent relations between her
and Rembrandt there can be, unfortunately, no doubt whatever. She was at
that time three-and-twenty, and a pleasant-looking girl enough, as her
portrait, now in the Louvre, makes clear, and that her devotion to
Rembrandt was not at all events self-seeking, the future made abundantly
evident. As long as she lived, she remained attached to him, through
evil fortune and ill-report, and, though there was too good reason for
the step, she is generally believed to have never asked or expected him
to "make an honest woman of her," as the phrase goes. To this belief,
however, I hesitate to subscribe; indeed, I incline to the conviction
that the description of her given in a lawsuit on October 27th, 1661, as
his lawful wife, "huysfrouw," the very title he himself gave to Saskia,
was strictly accurate. There is not, it must be admitted, another
particle of direct evidence that it was so, though this in itself is not
to be despised, but there are circumstances not a few that point in the
same direction.
While the connection was irregular, and to begin with, at least, it
undoubtedly was so, there was never any concealment or shamefacedness
about the matter, nor do Rembrandt's friends, not even the respectable
Burgomaster Six, seem to have looked askance upon it. It is true that in
1654 she was summoned, somewhat tardily, before the Consistory of her
church, severely admonished, and forbidden to communicate. That, of
course, was inevitable from their point of view, and only shows how
absolutely open the arrangement was. How improbable it is then that in
later years she should have deliberately perjured herself on the
question when, if it were perjury, the evidence to convict her must have
been overwhelming. There can, indeed, have been no doubt, long before
this church summons, as to the relations between them, for in 1652 she
gave birth to a child which did not, however, survive long, as we know
that it was buried in the Zuiderkerk on August 15th.
In October 1654, a second daughter was born, and was christened on
October 30th, Cornelia, in itself a somewhat significant circumstance.
We cannot, I fear, claim any very subtle delicacy of taste for
Rembrandt, it appertained not to his race or time; but it seems more
than strange that he should have given to an illegitimate child the name
which had been borne by his mother and by two luckless infants of the
dead Saskia. Taking all these facts together, I venture to conjecture
that we may still hope to hear some day of the discovery of proof that
some time, probably between July when she was rebuked, and October when
the child was baptised, Rembrandt, moved perhaps by the public disgrace
of the girl once more about to become the mother of his child, was duly
married to her.
Indeed, if he had not married someone, how came it that in 1665 Louis
Crayers, the guardian of Titus, was able to establish, before the Grand
Council, his claim on behalf of his ward against Rembrandt's estate,
then in bankruptcy, for 20,375 florins, the half of the property at the
time of Saskia's death three-and-twenty years before? Unless Rembrandt
had married again Titus would appear to have had no shadow of a claim
to principal or interest, yet the case was fought out to the bitter end,
and it seems quite incredible that the creditors should have been
ignorant of, or should have failed to produce, so important a piece of
evidence in their favour. Since Titus' claim was allowed, it is obvious
that Rembrandt must have remarried, and, if so, there can be no doubt
that it was to the true and faithful Hendrickje.
I have, however, been led to anticipate too far in the attempt to make
this reasoning clear, and must return to 1649, in which year Rembrandt
took a second step on his road to bankruptcy by ceasing to pay either
instalments of the sum remaining due for the house, or even the interest
upon it. Indications of the approaching disaster now follow thick and
fast. At some time between 1650 and 1652 the pearl necklace which
appears in so many of the pictures was sold to Philips Koninck. In 1651,
so wholly out of favour was Rembrandt's art deemed to be, that Jan de
Baer, a young artist, on leaving the studio of Backer, under whom he had
been studying, after hesitating for awhile as to whether he should turn
to Rembrandt or Van Dyck for further instruction, chose the latter,
because his style was most durable.
By 1653 Rembrandt seems to have finally abandoned himself to the
current which was drifting him so rapidly to wreck. On January 29th he
borrowed 4180 florins from Cornelis Witsen on the hopeless undertaking
to repay it in a year, and three days later, on February 1st, his
long-suffering landlord Thysz entered a claim for 8470 florins still
owing to him. Rembrandt, with a sharpness due probably rather to his
lawyer than to himself, demanded that the title-deeds should be
delivered to him first. Then, on March 14th, he borrowed a further 4200
florins from Isaac van Heertsbeeck, also repayable in a year, and after
trying, apparently in vain, through Fran[c,]ois de Koster, to recover
some of the large sums of money that must have been owing to him, he
obtained from Six yet another loan on the guarantee of Ludowyck van
Ludick. With this temporary relief he in part paid off Thysz, but 1170
florins still remained to be paid, and for this amount the creditor
obtained a mortgage on the house.
The end was now drawing near. One more effort, however, was made to
avert the crash. A certain Dirck van Cattenburch, a collector of works
of art, presuming that, in the state of Rembrandt's affairs, the large
house in the Breestraat could only be an encumbrance to him, proposed to
relieve him of it by a sufficiently curious arrangement. He was
professedly to sell him another, doubtless a smaller one, for 4000
florins; but, in fact, he was to give Rembrandt the house and 1000
florins in cash. For the remaining 3000 florins Rembrandt was to deliver
pictures and etchings of that value, and furthermore? to etch a
portrait, in a style not less finished than that of Six, of Dirck's
brother Otto, the secretary of Count Brederode of Vianen, which was to
be considered the equivalent of 400 florins. How far this elaborate
transaction was carried out is uncertain. Rembrandt obtained the 1000
florins, and handed over pictures and etchings of his own, or from his
collection, valued by Abraham Francen and van Ludick at over 3000
florins, but we hear no more of the house or the portrait.
It was in vain that his friends seem to have developed a perfect mania
for being etched or painted by him--Six and Tholinx, Deyman the doctor,
the two Harings, father and son--neither loans nor earnings could for
long stave off the evil day. As if ill-luck dogged the family, his
brother Adriaen had so managed to misconduct the business of the mill
that he and the sister Lysbeth were also on the verge of ruin, and
Rembrandt, in the midst of his own troubles, had to come to their
assistance. Small wonder, then, that the end was hastened. On May 17th,
1656, one Jan Verbout was appointed guardian to Titus in the place of
Rembrandt, and on the same day, before the Chamber of Orphans, the
unfortunate artist transferred his rights in the house to his son. Soon
afterwards he was formally declared bankrupt, and on July 25th and the
following day an inventory was made "of paintings, furniture, and
domestic utensils connected with the failure of Rembrandt van Rijn,
formerly living in the Breestraat near the lock of St Anthony." The
inventory still exists, and is full of interest, giving, as it does, a
complete description of every room in the house, from the pictures in
the studio to the saucepans in the kitchen, but want of space forbids
any extended extracts from it here.
The law seems to have moved slower in those days even than in these.
Rembrandt continued for some time to dwell in the house, and, apart from
the business worries, the little family appears to have been a united
and contented one. How united we discover from the will that Titus made
on October 20th, 1657, and rectified on November 22nd. By that time
Rembrandt's utter incapacity for business was probably recognised even
by himself, and all that Titus possessed was left to Hendrickje and her
daughter Cornelia in trust for him. Nevertheless, as if to smooth over
the slur upon his father's improvidence, he provided that Rembrandt
might draw a certain share, on condition that he did not employ it to
pay his debts, a most unlikely use, it is to be feared, for him to put
it to, except, like Falstaff, "upon compulsion." The remainder was to go
to Cornelia on her marriage or coming of age. The whole of the interest,
in the event of Rembrandt's death, was to go to Hendrickje and Cornelia,
and there are certain other arrangements of less importance concerning
the disposal of the property on Cornelia's decease.
A month later the law at last gave forth its pronouncement, and the
commissioners authorised Thomas Jacobsz Haring, an officer of the Court,
to sell the effects of the bankrupt by auction. The worst had befallen;
the home in which he had passed eighteen years, many of them happy, and
all full of industry, was his no more. The little family was temporarily
broken up. Rembrandt moved to the Crown Imperial Inn, kept by one
Schumann in the Kalverstraat, which ran southwards from the Dam, a
handsome and commodious house, which had at one time been the Municipal
Orphanage, and was then the customary place for holding auctions.
Whether Hendrickje, Titus, and Cornelia went with him we do not know. M.
Michel concludes, from the fact that Rembrandt's daily expenses,
included in the records of the case, were three or four florins, that
they certainly did not; but if the already-mentioned provision of 125
florins a year was considered sufficient support for the crippled
brother, more than eight times that amount might surely have sufficed
for four people, two of whom were children.
On December 25th, the sale of Rembrandt's property began in the very
house where he was lodging, but only a small portion of the goods was
then sold.
The wheels of the law, once started, ground evenly and small. On January
30th, 1658, the commissioners ordered the repayment to Witsen and van
Heertsbeeck of the money they had lent. The heirs of Christoffel Thysz
were also paid, in spite of the protests of Louis Crayers, who had by
then replaced Verbout as guardian of Titus, and, as such, asserted his
prior claim on the estate to the extent, according to Rembrandt's own
estimate in 1647, 20,375 florins. The other creditors, taking advantage
of Rembrandt's afore-mentioned failure to make an inventory at the time,
protested loudly that the demand was much exaggerated, and a cloud of
witnesses was summoned to give such evidence as they could concerning
the possessions of the pair at the time that Saskia died. Several of
these statements have already been referred to in this narrative; but,
in addition, Jan Pietersz, a draper, Abraham Wilmerdonx, director of the
East India Company, Hendrick van Uylenborch, Nicholas van Cunysbergen,
and others, gave testimony as to property owned by, or prices paid to,
the bankrupt in former years.
In the meantime, on February 1st, 1658, at the request of Henricus
Torquinius, the official who had charge of the business, the house in
the Breestraat was sold to one Pieter Wiebrantsz, a mason, for 13,600
florins, but for some reason the bargain was not completed, and a second
purchaser came forward with an offer of 12,000. There appear, however,
to have been doubts as to his ability to pay, and it was finally
transferred to a shoemaker, Lieven Simonsz, for 11,218 florins. Finally,
in September, the pictures, engravings, and other objects of art were
sold by auction, bringing in the ridiculous sum of 5000 florins, and all
the possessions that Rembrandt had collected with such loving care and
at so great a cost were scattered to the four winds.
It is pleasant to find that, in all this tribulation, many of his old
friends still stood by him and endeavoured to help him to commissions.
In 1660, for example, Govert Flinck, who was engaged on the decoration
of the Grand Gallery in the Town Hall, having died, it became necessary
to find someone to take his place. Rembrandt had never been much in
favour with the town authorities, but on this occasion, possibly through
the efforts of his old friend Tulp, who had been treasurer in 1658 and
1659, he was invited to carry on the work, and, as M. Michel has
conclusively shown, painted for them a large picture of the conspiracy
of Claudius Civilis. The opposition, however, apparently proved too
strong, for it seems doubtful if the picture was ever seen in the place
it was intended for. It did not, at any rate, remain there long.
On May 5th, 1660, we get another glimpse of the law proceedings when
Heertsbeeck was ordered to pay back the 4200 florins which the Court had
formerly awarded him, though Witsen was allowed to retain his 4180. On
December 15th of the same year Hendrickje made a final effort to restore
to some extent the prosperity of the household. With all proper
circumstance, she entered on that day into partnership with Titus,
legalising an association between them, informally established two years
before, for the purpose of dealing in pictures, engravings, and
curiosities. Both he and she contributed everything that they possessed
to a common fund, and each was to be entitled to a half share of the
stock. Rembrandt, partly, no doubt, from his proved incompetency for
business, partly, perhaps, to keep out of the clutches of the creditors,
was allowed no share whatever in the profits. As, however, it was
necessary that Hendrickje, who knew nothing of such matters, and Titus,
who was not yet of age, should have aid and assistance in the venture,
and as no one was more capable of giving this than Rembrandt, it was
provided that he should make himself as useful as possible in furthering
the interests of the firm, and in return should have board, lodging, and
certain allowances.
It was, perhaps, as judicious an arrangement as could be made for
Rembrandt's sake, but it is not wonderful that the creditors, who saw
all chances of their getting anything further vanishing into thin air,
should have been fierce in their protests. How far the association
prospered we do not know. Probably not too well, for Dr Bredius has
gathered together a mass of evidence to show that a large proportion of
the art-dealers in Amsterdam at that period came to disastrous financial
ends. It served, at any rate, to keep a roof over their heads, and the
wolf from the door, for we find them again settled down, this time in
the Rozengracht, in a house opposite a pleasure garden called the
Doolhof.
In 1661, an old friend again came to his support; for it was probably
van de Cappelle, who was a dyer as well as a painter, who procured for
him the commission to paint "The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," which
he so splendidly achieved. By this time there is some reason for
supposing that yet another trouble was coming upon Rembrandt. As far as
we know, he never executed any etchings after 1661, and M. Michel
suspected that this might have been due to failing sight. A study,
moreover, of the portraits painted from that time onwards, reveals the
fact that a large majority of them, if not actually all, were
conspicuously, some even enormously, larger than life, and that would in
all probability be a symptom of the same misfortune. These two facts
cannot, of course, be considered as furnishing absolute proof, but they
certainly go to create a probability; nor can we regard the supposition
that the overstrained nerves were giving way at last as in any way
unlikely when we reflect how incessantly Rembrandt had worked his
eyesight, and how minutely finished had been much of his work,
especially among the etchings, many of which were undoubtedly executed
by artificial light, after his day's painting was ended. It would be but
one more burden of distress laid upon those heavily-laden shoulders.
In truth, the story of the few remaining years is but a record of stroke
after stroke. On August 7th, 1661, the faithful Hendrickje was so
seriously ill, that, in spite of its being a Sunday, she made her will,
leaving, as was but right, all her property to Cornelia, but with the
stipulation that, in case of her death, Titus was to inherit, though his
father was to enjoy the income as long as he lived. That she recovered
at that time we know from her appearance on October 27th, as a witness
in the case of the drunken man already referred to; but the recovery
must have been only temporary, for, after this last appearance, we hear
of her no more, though we do not know the exact date of her death. There
is, however, M. Michel believes, a reason for supposing it to have
occurred in the autumn of 1662. On October 27th in that year Rembrandt
sold the vault he had purchased in the Oudekerk, which was no longer his
parish church. It was, nevertheless, an odd thing to do, since poor
little Saskia lay there; and M. Michel, in seeking an explanation,
conjectures that he was at that time under the necessity of providing
for the burial of Hendrickje in the Westerkerk, and that the sale was a
sheer necessity. There is, at any rate, no portrait of her known to have
been painted after 1662, and the conjecture that she died that year is
at least a plausible one.
[Illustration: [_Louvre, Paris_
PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
(ABOUT 1652)]
In the course of the same year, we hear of the last pupil coming to
Rembrandt, Aert de Gelder, whose youthful enthusiasm may have brought
some brightness, we may hope, into the life of the poor broken old man.
Meanwhile, the echoes of the law courts still rumbled in his ears, for,
on December 22nd, Isaac Van Heertsbeeck, who had evidently not complied
with the previous order of the Court in 1660, was again commanded to
refund the 4200 florins, and again appealed.
Rembrandt had by then so completely dropped out of public ken, that we
only get dim and fleeting glimpses of him. In 1664, we hear of him
moving to the Lauriergracht, still farther to the south-east, and it is
not until affairs draw him from seclusion that we learn more of him, and
then only indirectly. We may, perhaps, conclude, however, from the
scarcity of his works during these last years, that his eyes, and
possibly general health, were getting ever worse.
On January 27th, 1665, van Heertsbeeck's protracted struggle came to an
end, and the Grand Council decided that by June 20th the money must be
repaid. On June 19th, Rembrandt and Titus appealed to the law to
anticipate the coming of age of the latter, so that he might be legally
considered of years of discretion before the actual arrival of his
twenty-fifth birthday, a request which must have been connected with a
foreknowledge of the decision delivered the next day, June 20th, in
favour of Louis Crayers. This meant that the rights of Titus to the full
amount of his mother's fortune of 20,375 florins were allowed; but only
6952 florins remained, and of this, on November 5th, Titus was
authorised to take possession in his own name. It was but a scanty
fraction of what he should have had, but it was something, and the
little windfall may have had some part in the return of the family to
the Rozengracht. Of the next two years we know nothing, except that we
learn from a portrait of Jeremias de Decker, a poet who wrote eulogistic
verses on the painter, that neither the man nor the artist was entirely
neglected. The first sounds that come again to us out of the darkness
are those of wedding bells on the occasion of the marriage of Titus with
his cousin Magdalena, the daughter of Cornelia van Uylenborch and of
Albert van Loo, whose quarrel with Rembrandt years before had clearly
been forgotten. The note of merriment was, however, too quickly changed
for one of dolour, for ere the year was out Titus was dead, as we learn
from the record of his burial in the Westerkerk, on September 4th, 1668.
In March 1669, the widowed Magdalena gave birth to a daughter, and, on
the twenty-second of that month, Rembrandt stood by while the only
grandchild he was to see was christened Titia. We catch thereafter some
murmurs of that business which he so hated, in connection with the
settlement of the respective shares which the little Titia and Cornelia
were to draw from the remainder of the old association between their
respective parents; and then again comes silence, until, from an entry
in the Doelboek, the registry of deaths in the Westerkerk, we learn that
the long, slow, downward path has ended, where all paths end, in the
grave.
"Tuesday, 8 October, 1669, Rembrandt van Rijn, painter, on the
Rozengracht, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children."
He was buried, at the cost of thirteen florins, at the foot of a
staircase leading up to a pulpit on a pillar on the left-hand side as
you go up the church; but when, some years back, a coffin, supposed to
have been his, was opened, not a trace of his ashes was to be found.
[Illustration: [_National Gallery, London_
PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT
(ABOUT 1664)]
The subsequent history of the family may be briefly sketched. Within a
fortnight of Rembrandt's death, on October 13th, his daughter-in-law
Magdalena was also dead. On the 16th and 18th of March, and again on
April 15th, Abraham Francen, the old and faithful friend, and Christian
Dusart, acting on behalf of Cornelia, settled with Fran[c,]ois van
Bylert, acting on behalf of the baby Titia, their respective portions of
the small inheritance. Fran[c,]ois would seem to have been a kindly
guardian, and Titia to have had a happy home, for, on June 16th, 1686,
at the church of Slooten, she married his son, also named Fran[c,]ois, a
jeweller, living in the Kloveniers-Burgwal, in the heart of her native
town. Here she bore, and buried also in the Westerkirk, three children,
one in 1688, one in 1695, and one in 1698, and herself died November
22nd, 1725, leaving a fourth child, who only survived her three years.
Cornelia married a man named Suythoff, and with him travelled to Java,
where, in the town of Batavia, she gave birth to two sons, one on
December 5th, 1673, called Rembrandt, the other, on July 14th, 1678,
named Hendrick.
REMBRANDT THE PAINTER