REMBRANDT VAN RYN

But the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest painter that has ever lived, was Rembrandt van Ryn (1606-1669). Beside him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of this or that demand, according to their different times and circumstances, executed with more or less skill. For Rembrandt there seems no place among them all—he must stand somewhere alone; and there is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections except the man himself.

Perhaps the greatest difference between Rembrandt and any other painter is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only painted to please himself. It is for this reason, no doubt, that he was never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as Beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so Rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and persons on canvas. For the public it is enough that one of his landscapes should be sold for £100,000, and they all flock to see it; but put a fine Rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it, and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked.

This failure of Rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a fair representation of more or less familiar things.

The oldest story about pictures is that of Zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the birds came and pecked at the painting—some versions, I believe, adding that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. Similar stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. Rembrandt himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio, and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. We have heard, too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to deceive the unwary. But apart from these little pleasantries, one has only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. Vasari is constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be aimed at. We remember Ben Jonson's lines under Shakespeare's portrait——

"Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature to outdo the life."

And though Ben Jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was little enough art in his time in England for him to criticize, still he expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art.

With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it. That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like a mirror.

So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and their offspring—the two pictures at Hertford House—or a plain straightforward group like Dr Tulp's Anatomy Lesson (though in this he was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. And it was not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for their money than a picture (The Night Watch) which might be a masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a portrait group of the subscribers.

Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.

The consequences were important. For Rembrandt, instead of taking the matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like Backer, Helst, and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective of what the public might or might not think of it. As a result, we have in the later work of Rembrandt something that the world—I mean the artistic part of it—would be very sorry to do without. Now the meaning of this is, not that Rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons, or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the history of painting an artist had the personality—I will not say the conscious determination—to realize that his art was something quite apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on canvas was not merely a representation of natural objects designed to please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that would appeal to humanity for all time. That many before him had felt that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable—but none of them had ever realised it. Dürer, certainly, may be cited as an exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and business-like compatriot Holbein. But then Dürer, a century before, and in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular patronage as was Rembrandt.

Rembrandt was the son of a miller named Harmann Geritz, who called himself Van Ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the Rhine which runs through Leyden. His mother was the daughter of a baker. He was entered as a student at the University of Leyden, his parents being comfortably off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, Jacob van Swanenburg. Here he studied for about three years, after which he went to Amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named Lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the Italian School then flourishing in Rome.

Returning to Leyden, Rembrandt set up his easel and remained there painting till 1631, when he went to Amsterdam. His works during this first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it.

The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the various portraits of Saskia, or in The Turk at Munich. The two double portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall upon him.

PLATE XXVI.—REMBRANDT
PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
Louvre, Paris

In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more wonderful.

Dr Muther, in his History of Painting, observes that perhaps it is only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents Samson Putting Riddles to the Philistines; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique, mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling, intangible, Hamlet nature—Rembrandt." The author's theory of the psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle, though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in Rembrandt's religious pictures, from the Samson already mentioned to his last dated work, in 1668, the Darmstadt Crucifixion. What distinguishes Rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time, and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. Perhaps this is only another way of stating Dr Muther's theory of the psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by comparing his work with that of others. In technical skill Beruete claims a far higher place for Velasquez, going so far as to say that the Lesson in Anatomy is not a lesson in painting. But the difference between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. A reproduction of the Portrait of an Old Pole, at S. Petersburg, is in front of me, as it happens, as I am writing; and I see in this no inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any portrait by Velasquez.

In their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real man, we can place Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, and Van Dyck on pretty much of a level; if we had Van der Geest, Montanes, the Old Poleand the Laughing Cavalier all in a row, we should find there was not much to choose between them for downright realization. But while in the work of Velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite realization of what was before him, in that of Rembrandt we seem to see less of the Pole and more of Rembrandt himself. It is as though he were singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own thoughts: while Velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and the thoughts of his model.

That Rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary number of portraits of himself. The famous Dresden picture of himself with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. If to these we add, with Dr Muther, his Biblical subjects, we find that there is not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of Rubens, Titian, Velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference is at once apparent. So that in the pictures of Rembrandt we may expect to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. When we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a display consistent with his means and his station. If we were to peep into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with him into the small hours. That is the difference between the success of Hals with his Feast of S. George, and the failure of Rembrandt with The Night Watch. Hals was at the feast, and of it. Rembrandt was wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the company—he was carried away by his own. That is why his pictures are so dark—not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the Tenebrosi, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. When we call up in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. It is this characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of Rembrandt from that of his closest imitators. There is a large picture in the National Gallery, Christ Blessing the Children, catalogued as "School of Rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to justify the attribution, but that is all. I do not know why it has never been suggested that this is the work of Nicolas Maes, who was actually his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under the influence of Rembrandt. The Card Players, close beside it, has marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not felt within the artist's own consciousness.

The realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so characteristic of the whole art of the Netherlands, showed the most remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like Rembrandt. Sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that Rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and picturesque"—schilderachtig, as the Netherlanders called it. This combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. In the absence of any pictures by his masters Van Swanenburg and Pinas, it is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. From Peter Lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique. Kugler—who in these paragraphs is my principal authority—suggests that it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the pictures of Frans Hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in the neighbouring town of Haarlem. At all events unexampled freedom, spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other earlier Dutch master. But all these admirable qualities would offer no sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed, besides, of an intensely artistic individuality.

In his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the light full. Dr Tulp's Anatomy, painted in 1632, is the most famous of this period. In The Night Watch, at Amsterdam, dated 1642, the light is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct. Later, that is to say from about 1654 onwards, the golden flesh tones become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows and sometimes with rather cool lights. The chief picture of this epoch, dated 1661, is The Syndics, also at Amsterdam, a group of six men. This, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true masterpiece.

With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers, Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler gives to Dürer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of the true spirit of the Reformed Church. Though it is certain, Kugler admits, that no other school of painting in Rembrandt's time—neither that of Rubens, nor that of the Carracci, nor the French nor Spanish schools—rendered the spiritual import of Biblical subjects with the purity and depth exhibited by the great Dutch master. Here the kindly element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for composition, as in the Descent from the Cross, at Munich, in The Holy Family, in the Louvre, and above all in The Woman taken in Adultery, in the National Gallery. In this last, a touching truthfulness and depth of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to Rembrandt, are seen in their highest perfection. Of hardly less excellence, also, is our Descent from the Cross.

Endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that Rembrandt was a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from those by all other masters. Even the works of his most successful pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in energy of conception and execution. The number of his admirable portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as most characteristic. No other artist ever painted his own portrait so frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. That in the Louvre, dated 1633, represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of hope. It is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period. Another in the same gallery, of the year 1660, painted with extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply furrowed forehead.

PLATE XXVII.—REMBRANDT
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
National Gallery, London

The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and another of this earliest period, the very popular Old Woman, in the National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so characteristic of him. Of his later period—probably about 1657—a fine example is The Jewish Rabbi, and of his latest the Old Man, both in the National Gallery.