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[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A SLAV PRINCE
1637. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
REMBRANDT
BY
MORTIMER MENPES
WITH AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WORK
OF REMBRANDT
BY
C. LEWIS HIND
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1905
PREFACE
Although I am familiar with Rembrandt's work, through photographs and black
and white reproductions, I invariably experience a shock from the colour
standpoint whenever I come in touch with one of his pictures. I was
especially struck with that masterpiece of his at the Hermitage, called the
_Slav Prince_, which, by the way, I am convinced is a portrait of himself;
any one who has had the idea suggested cannot doubt it for a moment; it is
Rembrandt's own face without question. The reproductions I have seen of
this picture, and, in fact, of all Rembrandt's works, are so poor and so
unsatisfactory that I was determined, after my visit to St. Petersburg, to
devise a means by which facsimile reproductions in colour of Rembrandt's
pictures could be set before the public. The black and white reproductions
and the photographs I put on one side at once, because of the impossibility
of suggesting colour thereby.
Rembrandt has been reproduced in photograph and photogravure, and by every
mechanical process imaginable, but all such reproductions are not only
disappointing, but wrong. The light and shade have never been given their
true value, and as for colour, it has scarcely been attempted.
After many years of careful thought and consideration as to the best, or
the only possible, manner of giving to those who love the master a work
which should really be a genuine reproduction of his pictures, I have
adapted and developed the modern process of colour printing, so as to bring
it into sympathy with the subject. For the first time these masterpieces,
with all the rich, deep colouring, can be in the possession of every
one--in the possession of the connoisseur, who knows and loves the
originals but can scarcely ever see them, and in that of the novice, who
hardly knows the emotions familiar to those who have made a study of the
great masters, but is desirous of learning.
At the Hermitage in St. Petersburg I was specially privileged--I was
allowed to study these priceless works with the glass off and in moments of
bright sunlight--to see those sweeps of rich colour, so full, so clear, so
transparent, and broken in places, allowing the undertones to show through.
I myself have made copies of a hundred Rembrandts in order to understand
more completely his method of work. And in copying these pictures certain
qualities have been revealed to me which no one could possibly have learnt
except by this means. Rembrandt worked more or less in two stages: first,
by a carefully-painted monochrome, handled in such a way as to give texture
as well as drawing, and in which the masses of light and shade are defined
in a masterly manner; second, by putting on the rich, golden colour--mostly
in the form of glazes, but with a full brush. This method of handling
glazes over monochrome has given a gem-like quality to Rembrandt's work, so
much so that you might cut out any square inch from any portion of his
pictures and wear it as a jewel. And in all his paintings there is the same
decorative quality that I have before alluded to: any picture by Rembrandt
arrests you as a decorative patch--the grouping and design, and, above all,
the balance of light and shade, are perfect.
MORTIMER MENPES.
_July 1905._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT
CHAPTER II
THE APPEAL OF THE PAINTINGS
CHAPTER III
THE APPEAL OF THE ETCHINGS
CHAPTER IV
EPOCHS IN REMBRANDT'S LIFE
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT TRIUMVIRATE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Portrait of a Slav Prince _Frontispiece_
2. Portrait of a Woman of Eighty-three
3. A Rabbi Seated, a Stick in his Hands and a High
Feather in his Cap
4. The Holy Family with the Angels
5. Portrait of a Savant
6. An Old Man with a Long White Beard, Seated, wearing
a Wide Cap, his Hands folded
7. Rembrandt leaning on a Stone Sill
8. Reconciliation between David and Absalom
9. An Old Woman in an Arm Chair, with a Black Head-cloth
10. Minerva
11. Titus in a Red Cap and a Gold Chain
12. Portrait of an Old Lady, Full Face, her Hands folded
13. Portrait of an Old Lady in a Velvet Hood, her Hands
folded
14. Flora with a Flower-trimmed Crook
15. The Descent from the Cross
16. A Young Woman in a Red Chair holding a Pink in her
Right Hand
_The illustrations in this volume have been
engraved and printed at the Menpes Press._
REMBRANDT
CHAPTER I
THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT
Imagine a man, a citizen of London, healthy, middle-aged, successful in
business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and
limitations, as the absorption of Rembrandt in art. Suppose this citizen,
having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of
South Kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about
the Constantine Ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the Museum and
asks his way of a patient policeman to the Ionides collection. Suppose he
stands before the revolving frame of Rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from
right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed?
would his imagination be stirred? Perhaps so: perhaps not. Perhaps, being a
man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would
unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that
produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his
ear--"At the Holford sale the _Hundred Guilder Print_ fetched £1750, and
_Ephraim Bonus with the Black Ring_, £1950; and M. Edmund de Rothschild
paid £1160 for a first state of the _Dr. A. Tholinx_." Those figures might
stimulate his curiosity, but being, as I have said, a golfer, his interest
in Rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in
the revolving frame the etching No. 683, 2-7/8 inches wide, 5-1/8 inches
high, called _The Sport of Kolef or Golf_.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN OF EIGHTY-THREE
1634. National Gallery, London.]
Is it fantastical to assume that his interest in Rembrandt dated from that
little golf etching? Great events ofttimes spring from small causes. We
will follow the Rembrandtish adventures of this citizen of London, and
golfer. Suppose that on his homeward way from the Museum he stopped at a
book shop and bought M. Auguste Bréal's small, accomplished book on
Rembrandt. Having read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he
naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Émile Michel,
Member of the Institute of France--that mine of learning about Rembrandt in
which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his
companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of
_L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt_, décrit et commenté, par M. Charles Blanc, de
l'Academie Française. This sumptuous folio he picked up second hand and
conveyed home in a cab, because it was too heavy to carry. Now he is fairly
started on his journey through the Rembrandt country, and as he pursues his
way, what is the emotion that dominates him? Amazement, I think.
Let me illustrate the extent and character of his amazement by describing a
little incident that happened to him during a day's golfing at a seaside
course on the following Saturday.
The approach to the sixteenth green is undeniably sporting. Across the
course hangs the shoulder of a hill, and from the fastnesses of the hill a
brook gushes down to the sea through the boulders that bestrew its banks.
Obliged to wait until the preceding couple had holed out, our citizen and
golfer amused himself by upturning one of the great lichen-stained
boulders. He gazed into the dank pit thus disclosed to his eyes, and half
drew back dismayed at the extraordinary activity of insect life that was
revealed. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Beneath that grey and solemn
boulder that Time and man accepted as a freehold tenant of the world, that
our citizen had seen and passed a hundred times, a population of experts
were working, their deeds unseen by the wayfarer. Now what is the meaning
of this little story? How did the discovery of that horde of capable
experts strike the imagination of our golfer? The boulder was Rembrandt.
The busy insects were the learned and patient students working quietly on
his behalf--his discoverers and recoverers. He had passed that boulder a
hundred times, his eyes had rested cursorily upon it as often as the name
of Rembrandt in book or newspaper had met his indifferent gaze. Now he had
raised the boulder, as he had lifted the Rembrandt curtain, and lo! behind
the curtain, as beneath the boulder, he had discovered life miraculously
active.
Reverence for the students of art, for the specialists, for the scientific
historians, was born within him as he pursued his studies in Rembrandt
lore. Also he was conscious of sorrow, anger, and pride: sorrow for the
artist of genius who goes down to his grave neglected, unwept, unhonoured,
and unsung: anger at the stupidity and blindness of his contemporaries:
pride at the unselfish industry and ceaseless activity of the men who, born
years after, raise the master to his throne.
[Illustration: A RABBI SEATED, A STICK IN HIS HANDS AND A HIGH FEATHER IN
HIS CAP
1645. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
In the year 1669 an old Dutchman called Rembrandt dies in obscurity in
Amsterdam. So unmemorable was the death deemed that no contemporary
document makes mention of it. The passing of Rembrandt was simply noted,
baldly and briefly, in the death-register of the Wester Kerk: "Tuesday,
October 8, 1669; Rembrandt van Ryn, painter on the Roozegraft, opposite the
Doolhof. Leaves two children." Yet once, while he was alive, before he
painted _The Night Watch_, he had been the most famous painter in Holland.
Later, oblivion encompassed the old lion, and little he cared so long as he
could work at his art. Forty years after his death, Gerard de Lairesse, a
popular painter, now forgotten, wrote of Rembrandt--"In his efforts to
attain a yellow manner, Rembrandt merely achieved an effect of
rottenness.... The vulgar and prosaic aspects of a subject were the only
ones he was capable of noting." Poor Gerard de Lairesse!
To-day not a turn or a twist of his life, not a facet of his temperament,
not an individual of his family, friends, or acquaintances, not the
slightest scrap of paper bearing the mark of his hand, but has been peered
into, scrutinised, tracked to its source, and written about voluminously.
The bibliography of Rembrandt would fill a library. Several lengthy and
learned catalogues of his works have been published in volumes so large
that a child could not lift one of them. His 450 pictures, his
multitudinous drawings, his 270 etchings, their authenticity, their
history, their dates, the identification of his models, have been the
subjects of innumerable books and essays. Why, it would have taken our
golfer three months just to read what has been written about one of
Rembrandt's pictures--that known as _The Night Watch_. He might have begun
with Bredius and Meyer of Holland, and M. Durand-Greville of France, and
would then have been only at the beginning of his task. People make the
long journey to St. Petersburg for the sake of the 35 pictures by Rembrandt
that the Hermitage contains. He is hailed to-day as the greatest etcher the
world has ever known, and there are some who place him at the head of that
noble triumvirate who stand on the summit of the painters' Parnassus,
Velasquez, Titian, and Rembrandt. Having browsed and battened on Rembrandt,
and noted the countless cosmopolitan workers that for fifty years have been
excavating the country marked on the art map Rembrandt, you can perhaps
understand why our golfer likened the work of his commentators to the
incessant activity that his upturning of that grey, lichen-covered boulder
revealed.
[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE ANGELS
1645. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
But had our golfer, brimming with the modern passion for efficiency,
learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have
discovered that there was much to unlearn. The early scribes piled fancy
upon invention, believing or pretending that Rembrandt was a miser, a
profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "Houbraken's facts," we read, "are
interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes which adorn the plain
tale of so many artistic biographies. Campo-Weyermann, Dargenville,
Descamps, and others added further embellishments, boldly piling fable upon
fable for the amusement of their readers, till legend gradually ousted
truth."
All this and much more he would have had to unlearn, discovering in the end
the simple truth that Rembrandt lived for his art; that he loved and was
kind to his wife and to the servant girl who, when Saskia died, filled her
place; that he was neither saint nor sinner; that he was extravagant
because beautiful things cost money; that being an artist he did not manage
his affairs with the wisdom of a man of the world; that he was hot-headed,
and played a hot-headed man's part in the family quarrels; and that he was
plucky and improvident, and probably untidy to the end, and that he did his
best work when the buffets of fate were heaviest.
The new era in Rembrandt literature began with Kolloff's _Rembrandt's Leben
und Werke_, published in 1854. This contribution to truth was followed by
the works of Messrs. Bürger and Vosmaer, by the lucubrations of other
meritorious bookworms, by the studies of Messrs. Bode and Bredius, and
finally by M. Émile Michel's Life, which is the definitive and standard
work on Rembrandt. Our golfer, whose French is a little rusty, was
delighted to find when he gave the order for this book that it had been
translated into English under the editorship of Mr. Frederick Wedmore. It
was in the third edition.
He learned much from M. Émile Michel--among other things the herculean
labour that is necessary if one desires to write a standard and definitive
book on a subject. Not only did M. Michel visit and revisit all the
galleries where Rembrandt's pictures are displayed in Russia, France,
England, Sweden, Denmark, and North Germany, but he lived for several years
with Rembrandt, surrounded by reproductions of his pictures, drawings, and
etchings, and by documents bearing on their history, his mind all the while
intently fixed on the facts of Rembrandt's life and the achievements of his
genius. Gradually the procession of dates and facts took on a new
significance; the heterogeneous threads of information wove themselves into
the fabric of a life. M. Michel is the recoverer-in-chief of all that truly
happened during the sixty-three years that Rembrandt passed upon this
earth.
Every dead painter, poet, or writer of genius, has had his Recoverer. A
searchlight has flashed upon all that Charles Lamb said, did, or wrote.
Every forerunner who inspired Keats, from the day when he took the _Faerie
Queene_ like a fever, and went through it "as a young horse through a
spring meadow, romping," has been considered and analysed. You could bury
Keats and Lamb in the tomes that have been written about them. With the
books of his commentators you could raise a mighty monument of paper and
bindings to Rembrandt.
All this is very right and most worthy of regard. We do not sing "For they
are jolly good fellows" in their honour, but we offer them our profound
respect and gratitude. And our golfer, in his amateurish way, belongs to
the tribe. He has approached Rembrandt through books. His temperament
enjoyed exploring the library hive marked Rembrandt. Now he feels that he
must study the works of the master, and while he is cogitating whether he
shall first examine the 35 pictures at St. Petersburg, or the 20 in the
Louvre, or the 20 at Cassel, or the 17 at Berlin, or the 16 at Dresden, or
the 12 in the National Gallery, or the etchings and drawings in the print
room of the British Museum, or the frame of etchings at South Kensington,
so accessible, I drop him. Yes: drop him in favour of another who did not
care two pins about the history or the politics of art, or the rights or
wrongs of Rembrandt's life, but went straight to his pictures and etchings,
wondered at them, and was filled with an incommunicable joy.