The famous _Night-Watch_, in the Amsterdam Gallery, testifies to his
inventive faculty in 1642, the year in which the death of his beloved
Saskia caused him intense grief. From this he never really recovered,
as we see from the frequency with which during the remainder of his
life he painted pathetic subjects. What artist in the whole history
of painting has been able to impart to his rendering of the _Good
Samaritan_ the kindly solicitude of the principal character in this
parable, and the feeling of complete collapse seen in the body of the
wounded man, as Rembrandt has done in his superb canvas (No. 2537) of
1648 in this gallery? No less poignant is the grief depicted on the
face of the barefooted Man of Sorrows in the _Christ and the Pilgrims
at Emmaus_ (No. 2539, Plate XXIX.) of the same year. Here we see
convincing proof of the dexterous use that the Dutch “magician-painter”
could make of chiaroscuro, which he has handled with such masterly
effect in the _Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels_ (No. 2547, Plate XXX.).
All these paintings belong to the same period as the soul-moving
_Polish Rider_, which in 1910 passed from the collection of Count
Tarnowski at Dzikow in Galicia into that of Mr. H. C. Frick in New
York for £60,000. The _Portrait of a Man holding a Bâton_ (No. 2551),
in the La Caze collection in this gallery, was painted three years
later than the _Bathsheba_, or _Woman Bathing_ (No. 2549), of 1654.
The wonderfully realistic and in no way repellent _Carcase of an Ox_
in this gallery (No. 2548), like the picture of the same subject at
Glasgow, is an achievement of a very different kind, and belongs to the
year 1655.
The Louvre authorities have been well advised in recent years in
hanging all the pictures by Rembrandt in this collection in one Bay of
the Long Gallery. Here now we may study the _Portrait of a Young Man_
(No. 2545), the wonderful and rather later _Portrait of the Artist at
his Easel at the age of Fifty-four_ (No. 2555), and the striking _St.
Matthew_ (No. 2538) of 1661. Before these three works were painted, the
great Dutch master had been declared bankrupt, the sale of his most
treasured possessions realising a ridiculously small sum in the winter
of 1657.
Although Rembrandt’s own standard of morality offended his neighbours,
and his relations with Hendrickje Stoffels seem to have caused much
scandal in Amsterdam, we are not concerned with the morals of one of
the greatest and most esteemed of the world’s painters, but only with
his _œuvre_, a high place in which must be accorded to the _Portrait of
Hendrickje Stoffels and her Child as Venus and Cupid_ (No. 2543), which
was painted in 1662, the year that the large _Syndics_, now in the
Amsterdam Gallery, was completed.
He is also to be credited with the alternative version of the _Pilgrims
at Emmaus_ (No. 2555A), a painting of the same date, which for many
years was at Compiègne, where, however, it passed only as a school
picture. This profoundly creative painter, who learnt as time went on
to handle his chiaroscuro with increased effect, was also an etcher of
the highest order.
We may here note that the art of Jan Lievens (1607-1674), a
fellow-pupil with Rembrandt under Pieter Lastman, is seen in the large
but far from imposing _Visitation_ (No. 2444).
[Illustration:
PLATE XXX.—REMBRANDT
(1606-1669)