EPOCHS IN REMBRANDT'S LIFE
Suppose the admiration of our enthusiast for Rembrandt had been noted in
the select suburb where he lived: suppose his mother was one of those
estimable ladies who hold monthly Dorcas meetings in their drawing-rooms:
suppose that while the ladies were working at useful garments for the poor,
she persuaded her son to discourse on Rembrandt: suppose, because the
petition came from his mother that he, very much against his will,
consented.
It was not an easy task, as he took little or no interest in the life of
Rembrandt; his interests were entirely with the æsthetic appeal of his
work. What, he asked himself, can one say about the life of a man when that
life was wholly one with his art--mingling with it, ministering to it at
every point. A boy, the fifth child of a miller living at Leyden, is born
into the world, takes to art as a duck to water, becomes one of the
greatest painters of the world, dies in obscurity, is forgotten, and long
after his death is placed among his peers. What is there to say about such
a life? He made the attempt.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY IN A VELVET HOOD, HER HANDS FOLDED
1650. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
At the age of fourteen Rembrandt entered at Leyden University, but showed
little inclination for books. He preferred Lucas van Leyden to Virgil, and
his parents, accepting the situation, allowed him to study painting under
Swanenburch, and later in the studio of Lastman at Amsterdam. After a few
months with Lastman he returned to Leyden, "to practise painting alone and
in his own way." So much for his schooling. At the age of twenty-one he
produced a picture called _St. Paul in Prison_, and Gerard Dou became his
pupil. In 1631 he left Leyden and settled in Amsterdam. In 1634 he married
Saskia van Uylenborch, who bore him three children, and Titus was the
youngest. Some years later he had two daughters by his servant, Hendrickje
Stoffels. Perhaps he married her. She was a kind, good soul, faithful and
loyal to her master. His friends do not seem to have disapproved of this
irregular union, but the Consistory of her church summoned Hendrickje
before them and forbade her to communicate. At the age of fifty Rembrandt
was declared bankrupt. From that date until his death troubles encompassed
him; but he was happy so long as he could paint undisturbed. His son Titus
died when he was sixty-two, and the following year Rembrandt died, and
was buried at a cost of thirteen florins.
Our enthusiast did not find it easy to manipulate these facts, and he
elected to slur over the Hendrickje episode; but he was able to interest
the ladies of the Dorcas meeting by showing them some of Rembrandt's
pictures. He collected a series of photographs of the portraits and
paintings, including his favourite pictures, such as _The Jewish Rabbi_ in
the National Gallery, _Titus_ and _The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant_
in the Wallace collection, _Rembrandt's Mother_ and _The Singing Boy_ at
Vienna; and he invested sixpence in a little manual recently published,
called _The Masterpieces of Rembrandt_, containing sixty excellent
reproductions of his portraits and pictures.
He also displayed photographs of the remarkable series in the Hermitage
Gallery at St. Petersburg: _The Descent from the Cross_, with the brilliant
light focussed on the body and winding sheet, and fading away into the
darkness of the background; that radiant portrait of Saskia painted just
before her marriage to Rembrandt, known as _Flora with a Flower-trimmed
Crook_, standing at the opening of a grotto, with a wreath of flowers upon
her head, and the light falling upon her face and gay attire; _The Holy
Family_, the father working at his daily task in the background, and the
Virgin, who has laid down her book, drawing aside the curtain from the cot
to gaze upon the Child. He explained that Rembrandt, in placing this scene
in a humble Dutch cottage, knew that he could express the Biblical story
better that way than if he had painted an imaginary scene after the manner
of the Italians.
"This great Dutch master" (he quoted from Mr. Colvin) "succeeded in making
as wonderful pictures out of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom as the
Italians out of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day."
[Illustration: FLORA WITH A FLOWER-TRIMMED CROOK
1634. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
At this point of his discourse he began to feel more confidence, and he
proceeded to focus his remarks upon four periods in Rembrandt's
life--epochs that lend themselves to separate treatment, each epoch marked
by the production of a masterpiece, and one remarkable portrait that has a
particular and pathetic interest. Those four pictures are _The Anatomy
Lesson_, painted in 1632, when he was twenty-six; the _Sortie of a Company
of Amsterdam Musketeers_, known as _The Night Watch_, painted in 1642, when
he was thirty-six; _The Syndics of the Cloth Hall_, painted in 1662, when
he was fifty-six; and his own portrait, painted in 1667, two years before
his death. "His _Anatomy Lesson_," says M. Michel, "was the glorification
of Science itself; in his _Sortie of a Company of Amsterdam Musketeers_ he
embodied that civic heroism which had lately compassed Dutch independence;
and in a group of five cloth merchants seated round a table, discussing
the affairs of their guild, he summed up, as it were, in a few immortal
types, the noble sincerity of Dutch portraiture."
_The Anatomy Lesson_ was the picture that gave Rembrandt his opportunity,
and proclaimed his preeminence among the painters in Amsterdam. It was the
custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of
various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning
portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity. The
desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was
that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,--that one
burgher should not be treated with more importance than another. This
desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended to medical
circles. Portraits and portrait groups of famous physicians and surgeons
were painted and hung in the theatres where they lectured or operated. Dr.
Tulp, an eminent surgeon of the day, commissioned Rembrandt to represent
him performing an operation, proposing to present the picture to the
Surgeons' Guild in memory of his professorship. The grave, realistic
picture called _The Anatomy Lesson_, now hanging at the Hague Museum, was
the result. The corpse lies upon the dissecting table; before it stands Dr.
Tulp, wearing a broad-brimmed hat; around him are grouped seven elderly
students. Some are absorbed by the operation, others gaze thoughtfully at
the professor, or at the spectator. Dr. Tulp indicates with his forceps one
of the tendons of the subject's left arm, and appears to be addressing the
students, or practitioners, for these seven bearded men have long passed
the age of studentship. This picture made Rembrandt's reputation. He was
but twenty-six; the world seemed to be at his feet; in the two following
years he painted forty portraits.
It was not easy for our enthusiast to explain to the ladies of the Dorcas
meeting that the dissection of a body was a suitable subject for the brush
of a painter. The Dutchmen of Rembrandt's day were not so squeamish as we
have become since. They had a passion for the literal painting of literal
things, and this picture was destined not for a Tate Gallery, but for the
wall of an operating theatre. Dr. Tulp desired a picture of himself
performing an operation, and Rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way
that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever
since.
Ten years later Rembrandt painted another Doelen or Regent picture which,
under the erroneous title of _The Night Watch_, is to-day the chief
attraction of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. This time it was not a group of
surgeons, but a company of Amsterdam musketeers marching out under the
leadership of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq. In all these civic or
military Regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist's
fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money's worth in
the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form. It is an old
quarrel between artist and public. Mr. Abbey had to face it in his
Coronation picture; Mr. Bacon had to face it in his _Return of the
C.I.V.'s_; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the
complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last
century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator. Much
water had flowed under Burgomaster Six's bridge since Rembrandt painted
_The Anatomy Lesson_. Then he was the obedient student. Now he was an
acknowledged master. He painted _The Sortie of the Company of Frans Banning
Cocq_ as an artist who was profoundly interested in problems of light and
shade, with strong views as to the composition of a picture, not as a
methodical and mediocre painter desirous of carrying out the commission in
a way to please his patrons. They wanted a presentment of the face and
figure of each member of the company who had subscribed a hundred florins.
Rembrandt gave them a work of art. No doubt the captain and his lieutenant
were well enough pleased, for they stride forth in the forefront of the
picture, but the rank and file were bitterly hostile. From the painting of
_The Night Watch_ his popularity began to wane.
The history of this picture, after it had been hung in the Doelen or
assembly hall belonging to Captain Cocq's company, was as troublous as the
later life of Rembrandt. Years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and
ill-usage, it was removed from the Doelen to the Hotel de Ville, the
authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to
occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. This is proved by a
copy of the picture made by Lundens before the mutilation, now in the
National Gallery. When M. Hopman undertook the restoration of _The Night
Watch_ he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the
sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something
that Rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight. But
the popular name of the picture is still _The Night Watch_.
The ladies of the Dorcas Society expressed in eyes and gestures their
disapproval of the Amsterdam vandals who mutilated _The Night Watch_. One
of them remarked: "It happened a long time ago. So gross a barbarity could
not be perpetrated now."
Twenty years later, at the age of fifty-six, Rembrandt, having known what
it was to be homeless and penniless, painted his masterpiece, _The Syndics
of the Cloth Hall_, merely five figures grouped round a table, with a
servant, uncovered, in attendance. It is an extraordinarily real picture,
the final statement of Rembrandt's knowledge of painting, combined with
that rare power of seeing things just as they are--the hundred subtleties
that the untrained eye never sees, as well as the accents that all see. It
is the perfect painter's vision--a scene grasped as a whole, character
searched out but not insistent, the most delicate suggestion of equally
diffused light knitting the figures together. He made no attempt to be
picturesque as in _The Night Watch_; he was content just to paint five men
dressed in black, with flat white collars and broad-brimmed hats, and a
servant. With these simple materials Rembrandt produced the picture that
the world has agreed to regard as his masterpiece. Contemporary criticism
says nothing about it. The place of honour at the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam
is given to _The Night Watch_, but it is _The Syndics of the Cloth Hall_--a
simple presentation of five grave men seated at a table--that we remember
with wonder and admiration.
Our enthusiast, having dwelt upon these three masterpieces, marking epochs
in Rembrandt's life, referred again to the magnificent array of portraits
scattered in such regal profusion through the thirty years that passed
between the painting of _The Anatomy Lesson_ and _The Syndics_. Then
noticing, while enlarging upon the etchings, that his mother was casting
anxious glances at the clock, he hurriedly referred to the last portrait
that Rembrandt painted of himself, two years before his death. He could not
describe this portrait, which is in a private collection in Berlin, as he
had never seen it, so he quoted M. Michel's description: "This
extraordinary work, perhaps the last Rembrandt painted, is modelled with
prodigious vigour and freedom. With superb audacity, the master shows us
once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their
will. They are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. But the free
spirit is still unbroken. The eyes that meet ours are still keen and
piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the
toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. What was the secret of this
gaiety? In spite of his poverty, he had still a corner in which to paint.
Beside him stand an easel and an antique bust, perhaps a relic of his
former wealth. He holds his maul-stick in his hand, and pauses for a moment
in his work. He is happy because he can give himself up to his art."
[Illustration: THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS
1634. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
It was the last of half a hundred portraits of himself, painted and etched
without vanity; painted because a man's self is such an accommodating
model, always ready and willing; painted because Rembrandt loved to
experiment with himself before a mirror, grimacing, angry, stern, "as an
officer," "with a casque," "with a gorget," or, as we see him in the
National Gallery, on one wall with the bloom of youth and health upon his
face, on the other, dulled, stained, and marked by the finger of time. This
we can say: that he was always true to himself.