If we compare it with the badly named "Laughing Cavalier" of Franz Hals we see clearly enough the difference between drama and realism. Drama as defined by Robert Louis Stevenson consists not of incident but of passion that must progressively increase in order that the actor may be able to "carry the audience from a lower to a higher pitch of interest and emotion." This also defines Rembrandt's painting at all periods. As one approaches the human face in his pictures one becomes aware of an emotional quality that is irresistible, and in a portrait like that of Bruyningh the emotional quality is almost isolated from incident or detail. It is the great moment of the third act when the audience holds its breath.
"The Standard Bearer" is not accepted by Dr. Bode as a fine work or even as certainly original, the version of the same subject in Baron G. du Rothschild's collection having made much deeper an impression upon him. The Cassel version is nevertheless a work of great distinction, the grave and beautiful face and shining armor looking out of a luminous atmosphere that has more of the Rembrandtesque quality than many authenticated works of Rembrandt's riper period. The work is engaging, personal, striking, and if not entirely great certainly possessed of many of the qualities of greatness.
While the Cassel collection does not contain any of the superb self portraits of Rembrandt's later years, the one example in this kind having authority without great interest, it does include one biblical picture of unusual importance belonging to the year 1656, the "Jacob Blessing his Grandchildren," which is, however, unfinished. The square, direct brush strokes suggest those of Hals, the drapery is thinly painted with a flowing medium, the black shadows on the face of Jacob cut sharply into the half tones, there is little discrimination in the textures and the background comes forward. But the faces of the children are charming in characterization, recalling the simple tenderness of the "Girl Leaning Out of the Window" at Dulwich, one of the most enchanting embodiments of youth ever achieved by Rembrandt, and the woman, Israelitish in type, with large eyes and features rather abruptly defined, is an attractive attempt to realize feminine beauty, a task in which Rembrandt was never dexterous, however.
Of the two landscapes, that with the ruined castle is the most impressive, but neither compares favorably with the dainty perfection of the landscape etchings.
If we add to these examples the studies of old men's heads and the delightful portrait of the artist's sister holding a pink in her hand, we realize that the group as a whole covers many phases of Rembrandt's constantly changing inspiration. He betrayed in his later works the impatience of those to whom few years are left in which to complete their accomplishment, but he kept the sensitiveness of his youth well into his brief prime, although he transferred it from the field of form to that of light. It betrays itself in the quality of that light which absorbs all that is ugly, coarse, or ultra real in its poetizing glamour. From the tender explicit craftsmanship of the wonderful Saskia to the golden mist enveloping the figure of Nicholas Bruyningh, is a long step, but not longer than many a painter has taken in his progress from youth to maturity. The special comment upon Rembrandt's character as a painter which we are able to gather from the Cassel pictures is that in casting off the trammels of particularity he did not become less receptive to poetic influences. He grew more and more a dreamer, and in losing the clear objective manner of his early portraits he substituted not the idle carelessness which in the work of a painter's later years is apt to be condoned as freedom, but the generalization that excludes vulgarities of execution and makes necessary increased mastery of the difficult craft of painting.