Painting

When the painter Rembrandt came to Amsterdam in 1631, a young man seeking his fortune in the great city, a lad of twelve years was living in his father's country seat, near by, who was later to become one of his warm friends. This was Jan Six, the subject of the portrait etching reproduced here. There was a great contrast in the circumstances of life in which the two friends grew up. Rembrandt was the son of a miller, and had his own way to make in the world. Jan Six was surrounded from his earliest years with everything which tended to the gratification of his natural taste for culture.

The story is told of a little child who, upon being introduced to a kind-faced lady, looked up brightly into her eyes with the question, "Whose mother are you?" When we look into the wrinkled old face of this picture, the same sort of a question springs to mind, and we involuntarily ask, "Whose grandmother are you?" We are sure that children and grandchildren have leaned upon that capacious lap. The name of the subject is not known, though the same face appears many times in Rembrandt's works.

The word syndic is a name applied to an officer of a corporation, and this is its meaning in the title of the picture, The Syndics of the Cloth Guild. In Holland, as in England and France and elsewhere in Europe, guilds were associations of tradesmen or artisans united for purposes of mutual help and for the interests of their respective industries.

Holland, as is well known, is a country built upon marshes, which have been drained and filled in by the patient industry of many generations of workers. The land is consequently very low, almost perfectly level, and is covered by a network of canals. It lacks many of the features which make up the natural scenery of other countries,—mountains and ravines, rocks and rivers,—but it is, nevertheless, a very picturesque country. Artists love it for the quiet beauty of its landscape. Though this is not grand and awe-inspiring, it is restful and attractive.

by Estelle M. Hurll

In studying the fifteen pictures of this collection, we have seen something of the work of the great Dutch master, Rembrandt, and have learned a little of the man himself, of his love for the sweet wife, Saskia, of his friendship with the cultured burgomaster, Jan Six, of his faithful and reverent study of the Bible, of his rare insight into people's character. We are ready now to look directly into the artist's own face, in a portrait by his own hand.

The choice of pictures for this collection has been made with the object of familiarizing the student with works fairly representative of Rembrandt's art in portraiture and Biblical illustration, landscape and genre study, in painting and etching. Admirers of the Dutch master may miss some well-known pictures. For obvious reasons the Lecture in Anatomy is deemed unsuitable for this place, and the Hundred Guilder Print contains too many figures to be reproduced here clearly.

A general impression prevails with the large picture-loving public that a special training is necessary to any proper appreciation of Rembrandt. He is the idol of the connoisseur because of his superb mastery of technique, his miracles of chiaroscuro, his blending of colors. Those who do not understand these matters must, it is supposed, stand quite without the pale of his admirers. Too many people, accepting this as a dictum, take no pains to make the acquaintance of the great Dutch master. It may be that they are repelled at the outset by Rembrandt's indifference to beauty.

The history of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob reads like a romance. He was the younger of the two sons of Isaac, and was at a great disadvantage on this account. Among his people the eldest son always became the family heir and also received the choicest blessing from the father, a privilege coveted as much as wealth. In this case therefore the privileged son was Jacob's brother Esau. Jacob resented keenly the inequality of his lot; and his mother sympathized with him, as he was her favorite.

The history of modern Rembrandt bibliography properly begins with the famous work by C. Vosmaer, "Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, sa Vie et ses Œuvres." Vosmaer profited by the researches of Kolloff and Burger to bring out a book which opened a new era in the appreciation of the great Dutch master. It was first issued in 1868, and was republished in 1877 in an enlarged edition. This book was practically alone in the field until the recent work of Emile Michel appeared.