As long as society was conditioned by the aristocratic theory, Greek art, and the Renaissance interpretation of its principles, sufficed; but, with the growth and spread of the democratic, a new principle became necessary. Rembrandt conceived it, and our own age is learning to apply it. Our appreciation of the character of beauty has become enlarged by a realization of the beauty of character. The latter may be associated with beauty of form and features, though in real life it is more often not; yet, even when it is, we have discovered that the beauty of character is due, not to the form itself, but to the expression inherent in the form, and that character, as revealed by expression, is discernible also in things homely, even in the ugly. Art, in fact, has extended its province until it more nearly corresponds with the universal scheme of earthly conditions, wherein the good is mingled with the bad, and the sun shines alike on the just and the unjust. Meanwhile, even as humanity gropes toward some divine reconciliation of the coexistence of evil with good, so art must find some means of spiritualizing the facts of life and of idealizing the homely and ugly. This preëminently was Rembrandt’s gift.
The few known facts of Rembrandt’s life are clearly associated with his art. Born on the 15th of July, 1606, in Leyden, he was the son of Harmen of the Rhine, a miller in comfortable circumstances. He was sent to a Latin school as a preparation for entrance into the University of Leyden, that “when he became of age he might serve the city and the republic with his knowledge.” But he was destined to serve them in another way. Since he showed no taste for Latin and a single desire to be an artist, he was removed from school and placed with the local painter, Jacob van Swanenburch. He was then about twelve years old, and after spending three years with this teacher had made such progress that the father decided to send him to Amsterdam to study under Pieter Lastman, whose pictures of religious subjects had made him the most popular painter of that day.
With this master Rembrandt remained only six months. Lastman’s influence, however, had been considerable, though scarcely in a direct way. In fact, what he did for Rembrandt was to pass on to the latter the influence which he himself had derived from Elsheimer during a two years’ stay in Rome. For this German painter had made a great reputation by treating Biblical subjects in the natural or anti-classic manner. The scene was suggested by the Italian landscape, and the personages were real men and women, clothed in ordinary costume of the period. It is this translation of the Bible story into the vernacular of the day, corresponding as it did to the motive of Lucas van Leyden in his picture at Leyden of The Last Judgment, which must have been familiar to Rembrandt, that affected the latter’s imagination.
He returned to Leyden and for seven years in his father’s house continued a course of self-study. It was based on direct study from life, his models being himself and his relations, and included (where again one may trace the influence of Lucas van Leyden) the practice of etching. The earliest date recorded of any of these products of his needle is 1628, which appears on An Old Woman’s Head, Full Face, seen only to the Chin, and Bust of an Old Woman.[B] In 1624 appeared another dated etching, Rembrandt, a Bust, and the following year a series of small plates for which he himself was the model: Rembrandt with an Open Mouth; with an Air of Grimace; with Haggard Eyes, and Laughing.
These prints give a remarkable clue to a phase of Rembrandt’s personality that has not been sufficiently emphasized. They show that it included the instinct and faculty of an actor; the consciousness that in his body he possessed a muscular instrument capable of expressing the emotions of the mind; and, moreover, the capacity to play upon it. This throws a new light upon the habit, exhibited at intervals throughout his life, of making portraits of himself and frequently in costume. The latter particular is apt to be dismissed as a harmless pleasantry, whereas it should rather be considered extraordinarily suggestive. For he was not merely “dressing up,” but enacting a part in his own person; actually realizing in his body the idea that possessed his mind. That he could do this and needed to do it for the satisfaction of his own mental and physical impulses, helps to explain his extraordinary facility and power as a draftsman. For the virtue of great drawing consists in its quality of expression, in its ability to infuse feeling into a gesture or movement and so correlate the latter to the mood of mind, presumed to be dominating the subject. This virtue cannot be gained at second hand from a model; it must be inherent in the artist himself, and will be efficient according to the degree in which the artist can feel the emotion in himself and is capable of physically expressing it; in a word, to the degree in which he possesses the instinct of an actor. Viewed in this light Rembrandt’s habit of grimacing before a mirror, dressing up and posturing, gives a most illuminating clue to the source of his amazing versatility and capacity of expression as a draftsman.
In the same year, 1630, which produced the small prints, appeared also two “serious” etchings of himself; also two Biblical subjects, Jesus Disputing with the Doctors and The Presentation with the Angel; and, further, several fine portrait studies. In this year he moved to Amsterdam.
He was twenty-four years old, and, as far as etching is concerned, “was already in the peculiar situation,” I quote from Hamerton, “of an artist who has left himself no room for improvement except in attempting art of another kind, and in overcoming new, though possibly not greater, difficulties.” Among the oil-paintings that he had already executed are St. Paul (Stuttgart); St. Jerome in a Cave (Berlin); two portraits of old men (Cassel); and one of a young man, resembling himself, at The Hague. It was the fame of his portraits that, according to Orlers, brought invitations from Amsterdam to settle there; and during the first years of his sojourn over a shop on the Bloemgracht he executed six that are still in existence. But the most remarkable picture of this year is the St. Simeon in the Temple, now in the Gallery of The Hague. Here we detect for the first time the power and strangeness of Rembrandt’s imagination, displayed in the mysteriously lighted expanse of mammoth architecture and in lustrous fabrics, and, more essentially, the foretaste of his lifelong effort to construct a composition out of colored light.[C] It is the first revelation of his peculiarly individual self.
Meanwhile he had been attending the anatomy classes of the famous Dr. Tulp, and the following year, 1632, produced the Hague picture, The Lesson in Anatomy, as remarkable for clearly defined characterization as the St. Simeon had been for its imaginative treatment of light. Both have elements of indecision, for the artist was only twenty-six, but in them the qualities of Rembrandt’s personality are already established.
The Lesson brought him fame. Pupils flocked to his studio, clients sought his pictures, and the ten years that followed teemed with productivity and fortune. They cover his life with Saskia van Uylenborch, whom he married in 1634 and lost by death in 1642. She appears in frequent portraits and inspired many of his pictures. He occupied houses successively on the Nieuwe Doelstraat, Binnen-Amstel, and the Jodenbreedstraat, living simply, but indulging profusely in the collection of works of art. This heyday of prosperity in the companionship of Saskia is commemorated in the superb portrait of his wife sitting upon his knee, in the Dresden Gallery.
In 1642 his fortunes received a double blow. Saskia died, and his corporation picture, The Sortie of the Frans Banning Cock Company, popularly but erroneously called “The Night Watch,” was received with disfavor. It proved to be a turning-point in his career. Public recognition began to wane, and financial embarrassments to increase; yet his artistic fecundity continued, marked by more frequent examples of landscape. Toward the end of the forties he enjoyed the sympathetic support of the burgomaster, Jan Six, an enthusiastic lover of books and collector of works of art, whose friendship lasted till his death in 1658. Meanwhile, about 1653, Rembrandt seems to have married the woman who had devoted herself to his care, Hendrickje Stoffels. She died in 1656 and money troubles crowded upon him. He was declared a bankrupt; his household goods were seized by his creditors and later sold at an appalling sacrifice; the house in the Jodenbreedstraat also passed under the hammer, and Rembrandt retired to a house on the Rosengracht. This was in 1658. The house, which still exists, was a comfortable one; and it seems probable that the eleven years during which Rembrandt lived in it, until his death in 1669, were a time of tranquillity, as they certainly were of continued artistic activity. This period, indeed, produced The Six Syndics of the Cloth Hall (Amsterdam), a masterpiece of assured self-possession and complete achievement. It also was marked with many portraits of himself, no less than four having been painted in the last year of his life. One of them shows him blear eyed, with red and bulbous face, but laughing, and holding his maulstick like a scepter.[D]