And so we might take one by one the pictures of this master, and, whether the impression that it records is drawn mainly from the exterior of its subject or from a penetration of the character or soul within, whether it be the expression of the soul of some fact of Bible story, no matter what the degree of idealism involved, every time it is form or some interpretation thereof, that is the foundation of the picture. Not form, however, for its own sake, for the purpose of rendering it in its logical and reasoned completeness or of exploiting the master’s efficiency in doing what every student aspires, and many can learn, to do; but form so felt, so rendered, that what we are made conscious of is not alone the physical sense of form, but its abstract significance; in a word, if I may say so, the soul of form, as from time to time it is used to interpret some one or other of the artist’s impressions.
You cannot pass from one to the other of the thirty-seven examples of Rembrandt in the exhibition that, as I write, is being held in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, or travel round the galleries of Europe, intent upon the wealth of Rembrandts that they contain, without reaching a conviction, that grows more and more assured, of the profound knowledge and feeling for form
PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS REMBRANDT
BERLIN GALLERY
that Rembrandt possessed and communicates. He may reveal clearly but a portion of a figure, veiling or obscuring the rest; but what is revealed is sufficient for the physical appreciation of the whole figure, and enforces the physical significance, while the spiritual significance is profoundly increased by the demand that has been made upon our imagination. After long study one comes to believe, not only that Rembrandt treated form differently from other artists, which no one, I suppose, denies; but also that no other artist has ever treated it with such a mingling of power and subtlety, with so fine and sure a reliance upon its physical qualities, and yet with so marvelous a capacity to interpret its spiritual significance.
Almost similar in motive is Rembrandt’s use of color. He is not a colorist in the sense that the great Venetians were, for they extolled the glory of local color—the actual splendor of hue with which they clothed their radiant figures and wove about them a triumphant orchestration. This also is an abstract use of color, involving a consciousness and suggestion of the effect that color as color has upon the imagination. But Rembrandt went further. He, too, had the love of beautiful fabrics, bought them freely, and as freely used them on his models. But here he parts company with the Venetians; for by this time he has ceased to think of the fabric or its color as something of value in itself. It has become merged in the impression that he has formed of the whole subject. It may occupy a large or small part in the total impression; that is as it may be; but henceforth it is only contributory to the physical and spiritual sensations that he has received and is set upon interpreting. Thus he is at no pains to preserve the material integrity of the local color; he uses it as he does form: extracting from it this or that, here forcing or there veiling its emphasis, plunging much of it in shadow. Therefore, even as his treatment of form has proved an enigma to some critics, so some hesitate to call him a colorist. After the manner of the Venetians, I repeat, he is not. But need theirs be the only manner of the colorist?
Rembrandt used color as he used form, as a symbol of expression; and, to repeat, what he sought to express was the impression that the form and color had aroused in his imagination. When the impression was derived merely from the externals of form, he would elaborate in detail the retinal impression and in such cases usually preserve the integrity of the local color. But it was otherwise when the impression was extracted from the soul of the subject, whether the latter were an individual whose portrait he was painting, or a Biblical incident the significance of which he was elaborating out of his own inner consciousness of its meaning. For then he is not representing things as he sees them, but recreating the impression that they have made in his imagination. The local color becomes merged in the color of his imagination; gathers brilliance from its certainties, fades into the half-lights of its questionings, is threaded through and through with strands of discrimination, and plunged in the mystery of the unknowable.