Plate 15. The St. Anthony-Market in Amsterdam, with the Old Gate Transformed into a Weighing-House. After an etching by R. Zeeman, about 1650.
Plate 16. Rembrandt's House In The “St. Anthonie-breestraat” In Amsterdam On the left: As it must have looked when Rembrandt occupied it. On the right: Present state.
This house welcomed Rembrandt in 1639, when he acquired it for 13,000 florins (a good price in those days, showing that it was a desirable residence) and saw itself adorned with a unique collection of works of art which its owner, passionate collector that he was, did not cease to enlarge. That same house saw its illustrious occupant become more and more retiring, misunderstood by the majority of the public and finally struck by reverses, till a total bankruptcy necessitated the [pg 139] sale of the house in 1658. It has often been thought, that his undying mania for collecting was the principal cause of his misfortune, but a document, recently discovered, shows that Rembrandt was, like so many of his fellow-citizens, the victim of the economic reverses caused by the first Anglo-Dutch war. In 1653 nearly the whole trade was at a standstill, 1500 houses (others speak of double the number) stood empty, and on the 27th of June even the magistrate decided to leave off one of the two principal stories from its new magnificent town-hall, then in course of construction, a resolution which fortunately was revoked two years later. As a matter of fact trade weakened heavily until 1660, suffering reverses, not only from England's attitude, but also from France's and Sweden's fiendish acts. Although the town energetically opposed its enemies, often against the will of the Netherlands' States, it could not at once redress its internal depression, and we should not wonder at seeing the artist Rembrandt among the victims. He avows in the document that he lost considerably in trade, especially in maritime ventures. It seems that the trading hobby, innate in most Dutchmen at that time, was also strong in him; in an act of 1634 we see him already designated as “merchant” and not as artist!
The house seems rather to have gone up in value, for it realised in these bad times nearly as much as Rembrandt had originally paid for it. This is not to be wondered at, as it stood in a very profitable quarter. The street followed the course of a dike, called the St. Anthoniesdÿk, from which it derived its name; this dike was then and had always been an important way of access to Amsterdam, as it was the only direct route to [pg 140] Diemen, Weesp, and Muiden. In the beginning of the seventeenth century it was inhabited by many aristocratic families, with whom gradually intermingled Portuguese Jewish refugees, as this was a new quarter where they could more easily find living accommodation. As time went on, Jewish occupants began to dominate, and towards the close of the century the street was for that reason rebaptised from St. Anthoniebreestraat into Joden (= Jews') breestraat. We find this change illustrated in the fact that, when Rembrandt bought this house, one of his neighbours was a Jew, called Salvador Rodrigue, the other a Christian fellow-painter Nicolaes Eliasz, but when he left the house, Eliasz had died in 1654 and been succeeded by Daniel Pinto, again a noted Jewish name. These Portuguese Jewish families were a great advantage to the town and should in no way be placed on a par with the poor Jews, mostly of German and Polish descent, now occupying this quarter. The Portuguese Jews were highly cultured, well-to-do, orderly, and clean people; one of their most brilliant minds was Menasseh-ben-Israel, Rabbi at the Synagogue situated on a canal just behind Rembrandt's house, a great linguist, the first Hebraic printer in the Netherlands, the teacher of the celebrated philosopher Spinoza, a sympathetic and admirable figure, whom we see until the close of his life in friendly relations with Rembrandt.
Plate 17. The Bridge and Sluice called “St. Anthonie-sluis” in Amsterdam, seen from the North. Rembrandt's home ([plate 16]) stood in the immediate vicinity of this spot. After the drawing by A. Waterloo, in the Fodor Museum, Amsterdam.
If from this centre we look a little further around, we find in the same quarter other sites memorable in the artist's life: first of all in the same street, also near the bridge where Rembrandt's own house stood, we recognise the house of Mr. Hendrick Uylenburgh, a noted dealer in pictures and works of art and a publisher, with [pg 142] whom Rembrandt stood in close relation while yet residing in Leyden. This relationship was further strengthened when the artist, coming for good to Amsterdam, resided with Uylenburgh and remained in his house for some years, during which time he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Uylenburgh's charming cousin Saskia, Rembrandt's future wife. He married her in 1634, remaining at Uylenburgh's house until 1635. During these years Rembrandt seems to have kept a large studio, especially for his pupils, in a warehouse on the Bloemgracht, a quarter where we shall find him again much later. Passing along the same street, towards the centre of the town, we pass on the right, opposite the Zuiderkerk, the house where Lastman lived when he instructed the young Rembrandt, and at the end of the street we notice a heavy Late-Gothic building, the St. Anthonieswaag, formerly one of the gates, when the town was less extensive, but now changed into a Public Weighing House. Rembrandt's contemporary, the etcher Zeeman, has left us a charming little print of this edifice, reproduced on [plate 15]. The reason it should now interest us is because on its first floor it lodged the Surgeons' Guild, for which Rembrandt painted, in 1632, his celebrated Anatomical Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, now in the museum at The Hague. The commission for this masterpiece of Rembrandt's younger years was perhaps, because of its dimensions, one of the reasons for his removal from Leyden to Amsterdam, as its date corresponds with his establishment in Amsterdam. During two centuries the picture ornamented the interior of this building, together with another, still more wonderful, painting by him, The Anatomical Lesson of Dr. Deyman, of which only a central fragment was saved [pg 143] [pg 144] from a fire, now in the Amsterdam Ryksmuseum. Turning our back to the big building and following the canal partly reproduced in the foreground of Zeeman's etching, we pass on the left the house of Mr. Six, whom Rembrandt must have visited often, and come in a few minutes into the Doelenstraat, at the corner of which stood a massive tower, remainder of ancient fortifications, sketched by Rembrandt as we saw on [plate 12]. Next to this building was the Doelen (part of its back can be seen on the master's above-mentioned drawing), the meeting-place of the civic guards, now changed into a hotel of the same name, but in Rembrandt's day the place where the painter's most famous picture, The Night Watch, was kept, since a captain of the guards, Banning Cocq, had the daring idea of entrusting Rembrandt with the commission to portray him and his company. Two houses further along the street (a site now occupied by a bank, next to Messrs. Frederik Muller & Co.) we must pay attention to the place where Rembrandt lived in 1636. After his removal from his cousin Uylenburgh's house, Rembrandt himself states this address as “next to the pensionary Boreel” in a letter to the Prince of Orange's secretary, Huygens, a letter now preserved in the collection of Mr. Paul Warburg in New York. That house must have been brand new in 1636, as building on that side of the Doelenstraat was only started in 1635 (plates [18], [19], and [20]). It seems, however, not to have satisfied the painter, because three years later, before his removal to his own house in the St. Anthoniebreestraat, he gives his address, in another letter to Huygens, as being on the Amstel in a house called De suikerbakkerÿ (the sugar refinery) the exact situation of which has not yet been traced.
Plate 18. The “doelenstraat” In Amsterdam (old situation) The receding building, behind the low wall with gate, on the right, is the “Doelen” for which Rembrandt painted “The Night Watch.” The house where the master lived in 1636 was next to the house seen on the extreme right. The tower seen above the roof is the one sketched by Rembrandt ([plate 12]). Compare also [plate 20] After the drawing by R. Vinkeles in the Archives in Amsterdam