BLESSING OF JACOB
In the Gallery at Cassel, Germany
Rembrandt’s work is usually divided into three different periods. At first his method of handling was calm, measured, even at times smooth. His light and color were gray, as also his backgrounds. This period has been called his “gray period.” The “Lesson in Anatomy,” the “Sacrifice of Abraham,” the “Coppenol,” the “Elizabeth Bas,” the “Old Lady” of the National Gallery, London, all illustrate this early manner. It was gradually encroached upon and finally superseded by a fuller, freer handling of the brush, with much warmer color and light, tending toward reddish gold. This has been called his “golden period,” and marks the midday of his career. The beautiful “Saskia,” at Cassel, and the so-called “Sobieski,” at Petrograd, illustrate the beginning of this period—the changing from gray to warmer notes of red, yellow, and gold. The “Woman with the Pink,” at Cassel, the “Manoah’s Prayer,” at Dresden, the “Night Watch,” were done further along in this middle period. It was the time when Rembrandt was in his full strength, saw comprehensively, handled a full palette of color, and was almost infallibly accurate with his hand. In his third and last period Rembrandt’s work became rather hot and foxy in color, dark in illumination, kneaded and thumbed in the surface, and sometimes uncertain in drawing. He was expanding into a larger view and vision up to the last—seeing objects in their broader relations and proportions rather than in their surfaces. Toward the close he often slurred the surfaces, neglected textual qualities, and threw his whole force into the rendering of mass in relation to light, air, and color. The pictures of this period are hard for the beginner in art to understand, because he is misled by the roughness of the surfaces, the messy state of the pigments, the apparent fumbling, kneading, rubbing out and amending, of the brush work. But, as we have said, Rembrandt was purposely slurring surface truths for the greater truths of bulk, weight, and general relationship. The best example of this late work among our illustrations is the “Syndics of the Cloth Hall,” in the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. In it Rembrandt went back to his early method of lighting, but continued with his late manner of handling and coloring. It is superbly broad in vision, absolute in its truth to life, and convincing in its incident. The cloth merchants are seated about a table, perhaps figuring up their year’s balance, when someone opens the door to enter and they all look up to see the incomer. Nothing could be simpler, more direct, or truer. Rembrandt never painted anything better. For here he completely fulfilled expectations. Many of his later canvases he could not complete. The “Blessing of Jacob,” at Cassel, for instance, he probably gave up in despair, or was working upon at the time of his death. He had reached a pitch in his career when he saw and strove for things that his hand or brush could not realize or pin down to canvas. That is the great stone wall that even genius encounters and cannot surmount.
The Master’s Life
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
In the National Gallery, London
The story of Rembrandt’s career is recited elsewhere in this number of The Mentor, but it may be said here that it was not different from that of many other painters. He came up to Amsterdam from the outlying country, and achieved celebrity at an early age. Praise and pay and pupils poured in upon him. He married the beautiful Saskia and was happy. But as he expanded in vision and methods he went beyond the understanding and the appreciation of his public. His pupils, such as Bol and Flinck, who had a more commonplace point of view, and a smoother, prettier style of painting, outdid him in public favor. The public began to desert him, the fair Saskia died, the great master fell upon evil days, and finally passed out in penury and want—evidently neglected and possibly forgotten by the age and people he had done so much to glorify. The record of his death in the Burial Book of the Wester Kirk, Amsterdam, is pathetic in its meagerness. “Tuesday, 8th Oct., 1669. Rembrandt van Rijn, painter on the Roozegraft, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children.” It almost looks as though he were identified only by the squalid quarters in which he died. And this was Rembrandt, the greatest master north of the Alps, and a genius of almost Shakespearian quality!