Will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees,
heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often?
I feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of
the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different
toasts, I will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight
in the festive gathering. I touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and I
speak as my heart prompts me. It is not very important or interesting,
but I am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given.
In this frame of mind I am contributing my little share to the pile of
written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of
the great painter.
I
Many years ago I went to Amsterdam as an art student, to be trained
under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter Kruseman. Very
soon I was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration
the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the
time.
The pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the
draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a
background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely.
When, however, I expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these
portraits, the master refused my request. "No," he said; "if you want to
copy, go to the museum in the 'Trippenhuis.'"[1]
I dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me.
Having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book
to me. I failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned
scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. To my
untrained eyes the exhibition in "Arti"[2] seemed infinitely more
beautiful; and Pieneman, Gallait, Calame, and Koekoek especially excited
my admiration.
I was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my
fellow-students, but I had not yet gained the experience and practice,
which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but
highly artistic qualities of the old Dutch masters. I maintain that
however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old
Dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become
thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it.
In order to be able to sound the real character and depth of
manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and
developed.
It was long before I could summon up sufficient courage to enter this
Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started
on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as
in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and
many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness.
I began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist
in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. I realised that my
chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of
the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures.
Having learned to look upon art from this point of view, I entered the
old "Trippenhuis" with pleasure. Little by little the beauty and truth
of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. I perceived that their
simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in
which they were treated. The artists were geniuses, and the world around
them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late.
Knowing little of art, I chose for my first copy a small canvas, a
"Hermit" by Gerard Dou, not understanding that, though small, it might
contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. I
had to work it over and over again, for I could not get any shape in the
thick, sticky paint. Then I tried a head by Van der Helst, and succeeded
a little better.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
This portrait may be seen to-day in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is
said to be one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about
1635.]
At last I stopped before one of the heads in the "Syndics of the Cloth
Merchants' Guild." The man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey
hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. I felt that there was
something in the portrait's beauty I could grasp and reproduce, though I
saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from
what I had attempted hitherto. However, the desire to reproduce this
breadth of execution tempted me so much that I resolved to try my hand
at it. I forget now what the copy looked like; I only remember that for
years it hung on my studio wall.
So I tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the
different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "Night Patrol"
and the "Syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but
what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique Rembrandt.
In his work I found something which all the others lacked. Freedom and
exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and
forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio.
Although Frans Hals impressed me more than any other painter with the
power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by
Rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects.
When I had looked at Rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, I used
to go down to the ground floor in the "Trippenhuis" to the print
cabinet. Here I found his etchings beautifully arranged. It was a
pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table
covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio
and look at the gems they contained at leisure.
I often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two
hundred and forty masterpieces. The conservator never ceased urging me
to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to
compare them. How astonished I was to find in the painter who, with
mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "Night Patrol," an
accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a
great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of
the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper.
Still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in
these etchings. It was rather the singular inventive power shown in the
different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the
almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. The
artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it
found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate
handling of the needle.
Many Biblical subjects are represented in the Amsterdam collection; they
are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in
spite of their seeming incongruity. The conception is so highly
original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding,
that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted
beside them.
Among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike
heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked
at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the
portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes.
It is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving.
Motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every
curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. Each line has a meaning;
not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole.
Hokusai, the Japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old
that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke
of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. That is
exactly what Rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he
realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old Japanese; it is
one of his earliest etchings.
I re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful
old Jewish beggars. They were types that were to be found by the score
in the Amsterdam of those days, and Rembrandt delighted to draw them.
One is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the
master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which
his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at.
When I had looked enough at the etchings, I used to go home through the
town, and it seemed to me as if I were meeting the very people I had
just seen in the engravings. As I went through the "Hoog Straat" and
"St. Anthony's Breestraat" to the "Joden Breestraat," where I lived a
few doors from the famous house where Rembrandt dwelt and worked so
long, I saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; I saw the vivid
Hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women;
the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses,
the people, the sky. It was all Rembrandt--all Rembrandtesque. A great
deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which I have
been writing, yet, even now, whenever I pass through them I seem to see
the colours, and the kind of people Rembrandt shows us in his works.
In the meantime I had found a third manifestation of Rembrandt's talent,
viz., his drawings. To a young painter, who himself was still groping in
the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were
exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus.
Less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before I could
properly appreciate them, but when I understood what I firmly believe
still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting
them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines I felt their
true meaning. They were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings;
emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. They have been
thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand
that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least
sensation. When I looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by
all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a
seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully,
they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a
just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. The greater
compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes--all
are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
This famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our National Gallery.
It is on canvas 4 ft. 2+3/4 in. by 3 ft. 2 in.]
One evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed
us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however,
being by contemporaries who had already become famous. Among them was
one drawing by Rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar
effect it produced in this collection. The scene represented on the old
smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in
composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the
other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. Here was the
master, towering above all.
Thus I saw Rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and
could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or
etching needle. Whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a
corner of old Amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful
drawings. His pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naïve. His
nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared
paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt,
entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of
reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or
June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's
washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the
canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood.
And the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that
one can never look too long at them. All his work is done with a
light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once
the idea of painful study and exertion.