A fine gravure reproduction of this painting appears in The Mentor, Number 17, “Dutch Masterpieces.”
His Technical Method
There was no trick about Rembrandt’s painting. He was no slave to a peculiar color, canvas or brush. He painted at times with a palette knife: at other times with his thumb. He kneaded the surface, ploughed through it when it was wet, did almost anything to get effects by catches of light and shade whereby he drew and modeled. But none of these small peculiarities explains his technical success. His methods were sound enough, and for the most part were known before his day; but he applied them better and increased their carrying power. He has been called the master of light and shade, and so, indeed, he was within a limited range. It was the same light and shade known to Leonardo, Giorgione, and Carravagio, and probably Rembrandt got it from pictures of the Neapolitan School, though he never was in Italy. But Rembrandt improved upon the Italian method of using shadow. He made it transparent, enveloping, mysterious. And its antithesis, light, he made penetrating and dramatic by putting it in sharp contrast. Out of the two he got wonderful effects. In doing the portrait head, for instance, he threw his highest light on the collar, the nose, the chin, the forehead. This high light ran off quickly into half-light and then into shadow, so that by the time the ear or side of the neck was reached, dark, even black, notes were used. The decrease was rapid; in fact often violent, but this only served to focus the attention more keenly upon the dominant features of the face. The result was what has been called “forced,” but it was very effective. It was the same effect that one sees today at the opera, when the chief actor is in the spot-light and the rest of the stage is in gloom.
SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH HALL
In the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam
A fine gravure reproduction of this painting appears in The Mentor, Number 8, “Pictures We Love to Live With.”
The Night Watch
But this violent focusing of light had its limitations even in Rembrandt’s hands. The “Night Watch” exemplifies them. This was to be a portrait group of the sixteen members of the Frans Banning Cock Shooting Company. The members wanted their portraits painted in a group, after the manner of the time, and Rembrandt conceived the idea of painting the portraits and making a stirring picture of the company coming out of its quarters, at one and the same time. It was an ambitious scheme, and not wholly successful, because here came in the limitations of his method. He painted sixteen portraits with his spot-light illumination, each one being completed under its own light. The picture lacked that one light which should have bound together the whole company. As a result there were sixteen separate portraits on the one canvas, held together in measure by shadow, color and atmosphere, but spotty in the lighting. The French writers of the eighteenth century could not understand the lighting, and were led to think the picture represented a night scene. They called it the “Ronde de Nuit,” and, later, Sir Joshua Reynolds translated this into “Night Watch.” But nothing is more certain than that Rembrandt intended it for a day scene in full sunlight. It was simply his arbitrary way of handling light that made a night effect out of daylight.
