Rembrandt van Rijn

by Malcolm Bell

We will take first the picture discovered by Sir J. C. Robinson about twenty years ago, and presented by him to the Berlin Gallery. It represents a wrinkled old man, seated at a table. Papers and account books lie around him, and are heaped up in the background, and on his left, resting on a thick volume, stands a fat purse. A pair of scales are in front of him, and beside them a dozen or so of coins. Lifting a candle in his left hand, he throws the light of it upon a piece of money. The work, though promising, is in no way startling, and he would have been an acute critic who could have foretold from it the lofty height to which the painter of it was to soar. It is signed, with one of the ever-varying forms of his signature, R.H., combined in a monogram, followed by the date 1627.

The other picture known to belong to this first year, "St Paul in Prison," is in the Museum at Stuttgart [No. 225], and presents much the same merits of close observation, much the same defects of timid execution as the last. It represents the saint seated in a straw-strewn dungeon, lighted by a single beam of sunlight, surrounded by books, with the sword that symbolises him, meditating before writing. The signature in this case is a double one: the first, consisting of his full name, with one of his curious mis-spellings, Rembrand, and underneath fecit; the second an elaborate R followed by f. 1627, and below the down stroke, crossing the tail of the R, a smaller L, which Dr Bode suggests stands for Leydensis.

Three other pictures, all undated, are attributed to this year or the next, a "Philosopher reading by Candle-light," painted on copper, "A Study of Himself," at Cassel [No. 208], and a "Portrait of his Mother," which was lent for a time to the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam, but is there no longer.

In the Cassel picture, small as it is, the breadth and vigour of treatment, the courage of the work are so remarkable that it is difficult to believe that it is of the same period as the previous pictures. It is a study of little more than the head, presenting one of those effects of contrasted light and shade which he so loved that pseudo-art slang has nicknamed them of late years Rembrandt effects. The shadows are a little dark, the contrasts are a little forced, wanting the true gradations, but the power displayed is so great, the frankness of the handling so certain that, especially in a photograph, the little study has all the appearance of a life-sized picture.

There are again two pictures dated in the following year, 1628. "Samson captured by the Philistines," at Berlin, is a not too successful first attempt at a composition of several figures, but it is of interest to the student as showing the sternly practical bent of Rembrandt's imagination, the intense craving for a strictly probable conception of the scene which, though at times it led him over the border of the simple into the absolutely ludicrous, more often gives that wonderfully impressive vitality and depth of feeling to his pictures. Here, as elsewhere, he aims not at all at heroic attitudes and over-dramatic effect; he makes no attempt to invent the scene as it ought to have looked, but endeavours to realise how it did look. The Philistines, he knew, were afraid of Samson, and he will not bate a jot of their terrors. One of them advances in fear and trembling, carefully keeping Delilah between himself and the object of his dread; while the other hides unequivocally behind the bed-curtains.

Here, also, we find an instance of his habit of painting in accessories because they were picturesque and available, quite regardless of their appropriateness, in the Malay kriss thrust into Samson's belt; and here we find for the first time that blending of the features of the two earlier monograms, the R.H. of the one, with the L. of the other, into the thenceforth frequent combination R.H.L. with the date 1628.

The second picture, bearing the same monogram and date, is in the possession of Herr Karl von der Heydt of Elberfeld, showing a man in full armour, standing by a fire in a courtyard, and closely observed by soldiers and servants, which Dr Bode not unreasonably believes to represent "The Denial of St Peter." Seven other pictures are attributed to about that date, one of which is believed by its possessor, Dr Bredius, to be a "Portrait of Rembrandt's Mother" (see [illustration, p. 6]). There are also a copy of this, showing a little more of the figure, attributed to Rembrandt, but probably by another hand; two portraits supposed to be "The Painter's Father," one lent by Dr Bredius to the Museum at the Hague [No. 565], the other in the Museum at Nantes; a "Portrait of a Boy," at Hinton St George, and a doubtful one of "A Young Girl," called Rembrandt's sister Lysbeth, at Stockholm [No. 591]. A "Judas with the Price of the Betrayal," in the collection of Baron Arthur de Schickler of Paris, is considered by M. Michel to be the identical picture to which Constantin Huygens referred in that eulogy which has been mentioned in the painter's life. A "Raising of Lazurus," in the collection of Mr Yerkes in New York, completes the list.

There is only one picture bearing the date 1629, a small "Portrait of Himself," at Gotha [No. 181]; but there are eleven others believed to have been painted about that time. Two are in the Mauritshuis at the Hague. A "Bust of Himself" [No. 148] is a strong, resolute piece of work, and a marked advance on all that he had done before. The other picture at the Hague [No. 598] is supposed to be his elder brother Adriaen. There is less doubt about a portrait in the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam [No. 1248], painted about that time, though bearing a forged signature and the impossible date 1641. It is that of a man with a short peaked beard and grey moustaches martially brushed up, and a long aquiline nose. The same features occur frequently in the earlier pictures and etchings, and M. Michel has made out a very good case for their being those of Harmen Gerritsz, the painter's father.

There are three other "Portraits of Himself," "A Head of a Boy," "A Young Man Laughing," and a "St Peter," all painted about that time; but of more importance are two small subject-pictures. The first, signed R.H., but not dated, "Christ at Emmaus," in the possession of Madame André-Jacquemart of Paris, is the earliest example of that presentment of a group of figures lighted by artificial light, to which Rembrandt was so partial. Here, as in most cases, the source of the light is hidden, as it stands on a table, on the right of the picture, in front of which Christ is seated, in profile to the left, his silhouette sharply cut against the radiance. At his feet one of the disciples kneels. The second, seated in the centre, on the further side of the table, lifts up his hands in amazement. On the left, in the background, the secondary softer illumination, so frequently introduced in similar effects by Rembrandt, is provided by the glow of firelight on two women engaged in cooking. The other is "The Presentation in the Temple," in the collection of Consul Weber at Hamburg. Like the last, it is signed, with the full name Rembrandt however, but is not dated, and the effect is to some extent marred by the harshness of the contrasts of light and shade, his later complete grasp of subtle transitions being still imperfectly developed.

Six out of the seventeen pictures attributed to 1630 or thereabouts are signed and dated, and one, a reproduction of the "Portrait of his Father," in the Hermitage at St Petersburg [No. 814], is signed with the monogram R.H.L., but not dated; while a different portrait of the same, at Rotterdam [No. 237], is signed R. alone. Four of these are portraits: one, at Hamburg, of "Maurice Huygens," the brother of the painter's admirer Constantin; one, in the collection of Count Andrassy at Buda-Pesth, his own; one, at Cassel, of an unknown "Old Man" [No. 209]; and one, in the Ferdinandeum at Innsbruck, though called "Philon the Jew," is probably his father. One of the two subject-pictures, in the Six collection, Amsterdam, is a sketch, broadly but expressively handled, of "Joseph interpreting his Dreams," signed with the full name Rembrandt, 1630. The other, signed R.H.L. 1630, in the collection of Count Stroganoff, is of doubtful import. It represents an old man seated in a cave, resting his head upon his right hand, while his left rests on a large book. Beside him lie a cloth embroidered with gold, various gold vessels, and other objects of value. In the distance is seen a town in flames, from which the inhabitants are hurriedly escaping. What it is intended to represent is an unsolved riddle, and the title of "A Philosopher in Meditation," though convenient to identify it by, has not otherwise much significance. The remaining eleven pictures are studies or portraits, of which the old woman, belonging to the Earl of Pembroke, a bust of "A Young Girl," the property of Dr Bredius, and lent by him to the Hague Museum, and another "Portrait of an Old Woman" resembling somewhat in features the picture at Wilton, but known, for some mysterious reason as, "The Countess of Desmond," may be mentioned.