At what time in 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam we have no means of judging, nor can we say with any certainty which pictures of that year were painted before, which after, his change of residence. A "Bust of his Father," signed R.H.L. 1631, the property of Mr Fleischmann, was probably among the former. The "Young Man with the Turban," at Windsor, must also, presumably, have been painted before his removal, if M. Michel is justified in his belief that it is a portrait of Gerard Dou. Of the others we know nothing that points either way.
Rembrandt was now beginning to find himself. The dry precision, the timid carefulness have disappeared. His hand moves easily about its appointed task, not indeed, as yet, with the splendid freedom of later years, but with an assured confidence. He knows what he wants to do, and begins to feel that he can do it. The commissions that finally necessitated his establishment in Amsterdam showed him also, we may suppose, that other people appreciated the fact, and we may, perhaps, refer to this growing confidence in himself the great increase in the number of pictures signed that year. There are eleven, bearing both date and signature, two signed, but undated, and two which, though bearing neither date nor signature, are believed to have been painted about that time.
[Hermitage, St. Petersburg
PORTRAIT CALLED COPPENOL
(1631)
Of the first class, a picture of a man reading, in the Museum at Stockholm [No. 579], known as "St Anastasius," bears yet another version of the painter's name, the d being absent in this case, so that it reads Rembrant. A "Holy Family," at Munich [No. 234], signed Rembrandt, is an example of a propensity, which he never thoroughly shook off, to over-compose his pictures.
The same over-marked arrangement, though, to a far less degree, is also observable in the pyramidal group in the otherwise splendid "Presentation in the Temple," at the Hague [No. 145]. This is signed with the initials R.H. alone, interlaced, but seven others bear the three, R.H.L., including the portrait of Gerard Dou, already mentioned; a portrait, said to be his mother, at Oldenburg [No. 166], wearing a semi-oriental dress, and reading, from which circumstance the picture has obtained the name of "The Prophetess Anna"; and the "Portrait of a Merchant," long called "Coppenol," in the Hermitage at St Petersburg [No. 808].
Of the two undated pictures, "Zachariah receiving the Prophecy of the Birth of John the Baptist," in the collection of M. Albert Lehmann, Paris, bears the full name Rembrandt. The mysterious figure at Berlin [No. 828C.], a young woman in a rich dress, seated by a table, on which lie pieces of armour, a book, and a lute, while other arms, including a shield, decorated with a gorgon's head, hang on the wall above her, gaming for her the fanciful titles "Judith" or "Minerva," has only vague traces of the initial R. Of the last class, one is a copy, formerly in the Beresford-Hope collection, of the "Portrait of his Father," in the Ryksmuseum, the other is a small figure of "Diana Bathing," in the collection of M. Warneck, Paris.
Once satisfactorily established in Amsterdam, Rembrandt increased his annual production marvellously. The number of pictures known or believed to belong to each of the four preceding years, are, in succession, four, nine, twelve, and twenty, the numbers for the four succeeding years are, respectively, forty-two, thirty, twenty-six, and twenty-seven; or, taking the average of each period, we find that the first would give a little more than eleven pictures per annum, the second, very nearly thirty. 1632, in especial, when he was new to Amsterdam, was a year of extraordinary energy.
