That Rembrandt did make considerable progress during the following three years is, of course, certain; and when his apprenticeship drew to an end the question arose as to what was to come next. The experience of a young fellow-artist probably suggested the answer. About the time Rembrandt entered Swanenburch's studio Jan Lievensz, a fellow-citizen, a year younger than Rembrandt, who had, however, entered upon his artistic studies while Rembrandt was still struggling with, or against, the detested Latin, returned from completing his studies in the studio of Pieter Lastman at Amsterdam. The father of Jan was a farmer, a man in the same rank of life as Hermann the miller, and probably had business connections with him, so that the acquaintanceship between the two sons, destined to ripen into warm friendship, doubtless began in early boyhood.
Certain it is, at any rate, that when Jan returned from Lastman's studio to astound his townsmen with his precocity, the intimacy between him and Rembrandt became close; in a few years their names seem to have become as inseparable as those of Damon and Pythias, and it was no doubt from the enthusiasm of Lievensz that the impulse arose which, in 1624, sent Rembrandt also to study under Lastman. The experiment, however, was not a success. Lievensz had remained with him two years; Rembrandt wearied of it in six months. And, truly, though he enjoyed at that time an incomprehensibly large measure of popularity and success, Lastman, though a far better artist than Swanenburch, was not one of those whose names we nowadays inscribe on the roll of great painters. He had been, moreover, one of the large group who had trudged to far-away Rome, and come under the influence of Elsheimer there, and the exotic and ill-adapted traditions and conventions of the school were not calculated to appeal to so ardent and eager a seeker after truth as Rembrandt. He wanted to find nature, and was not to be put off by a diluted semi-Italian imitation of it; and so, after a few months' trial, he packed up his paints and canvases, and returned to his family in Leyden "to study and practise painting alone and in his own way," to quote again the garrulous Orlers.
That so indefatigable and untiring a worker as Rembrandt did not waste time, when once he was safely established in his father's house, is certain, for Orlers says that he worked incessantly as long as the light lasted; but we know of nothing that he produced until three years later, when he painted two still existing pictures, signing and dating both.
From this time his reputation and that of Lievensz ripened rapidly. Arent van Buchel, in his "Res Pictoriæ," mentions him in 1628; and Constantin Huygens, in a manuscript autobiography, discovered in 1891 by Dr Worp of Groningen, and written probably between 1629 and 1631, was enthusiastic concerning both, "still beardless yet already famous"—an appreciation that was not to be without its favourable influence on Rembrandt's future. Nor was this growing fame productive of mere empty praise. In February 1628, when he was only one-and-twenty, Gerard Dou, his first pupil, came to him and remained until he left Leyden for Amsterdam three years later.
Many causes probably combined to promote this change of residence. On the twenty-seventh of April 1630 the first break in the united family circle was brought about by the death of his father. The blow must have been a heavy one, for he must have been a kindly and sympathetic companion to his children, if we may judge by the refined and sensitive face which looks out at us from the portraits believed to be his, and a merry one to boot, with a pretty humour of his own, if M. Michel be justified in his conclusion that the etching of the bald man with a chain (B. 292) is also a portrait of him. The loss further brought changes into the family arrangements. The eldest brother, as far back as 1621, had been crippled by an accident, and on March 16th of that year a life-interest in the estate to the amount of 125 florins per annum had been formally established for his maintenance, so that the superintendence of the affairs of the mill fell to the second son Adriaen, who abandoned his trade of shoe-making to undertake it, and made nothing, or worse, of it.
The young artist's reputation as a portrait painter had, moreover, spread to Amsterdam some time before, and many commissions came to him thence. For a while he merely went over, stayed long enough to do the work, and returned again to Leyden, but as the demands upon his time increased this must have proved a wasteful, inconvenient, and finally impossible proceeding. Leyden, again, was a University town, where religion and philosophy were more thought of and more sought after than such a trifle as art, as indeed is still the case in some University towns that could be mentioned; while Amsterdam was a city of prosperous traders making more money than they knew how to spend or employ, and ready enough to devote some of their superfluity to portraits of themselves and wives, or pictures of incidents and places, and it was clearly desirable that one able and willing to satisfy their wishes in this respect should be upon the spot.
[Cassel Gallery
PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT'S FATHER
(ABOUT 1631)
The little coterie of artists, too, was on the verge of dispersal in any case, by the loss of Rembrandt's closest tie with it, Jan Lievensz. He had sold a picture of a man reading by a turf fire to the Prince of Orange, who had presented it to the English Ambassador, and he in turn had passed it on to that king of picture lovers, Charles the First, who had been so well pleased with it that a pressing invitation to visit England had been sent to the painter, and accepted. Nor, probably, was it only the chance of obtaining more employment that attracted Rembrandt. The famous "Anatomy Lesson" bears the date 1632, and, even if the commission for it had not actually been offered during the preceding year, it may very well have been suggested in the course of conversation by the doctor who had added to his name, Clæs Pietersz, that of Tulp, taking it from a tulip which was carved on the front of his house, who figures so conspicuously in it. If this were so, it must have been evident to Rembrandt that to undertake so large and important a picture while living in another city would mean either risking the uniformity and continuity of his work, or settling down for a prolonged period in lodgings in Amsterdam, and this may well have confirmed his decision to at once establish himself there permanently.