Rembrandt van Rijn

by Malcolm Bell

THE SHELL (B. 159)
(1650)

Another splendid example of that year is the "Beggars at the Door of a House" (B. 176), a masterpiece of composition and workmanship. It has all the rich effect of a highly-laboured piece of work, yet a careful study of it shows how simple and direct are the means actually employed; for the elaborately-finished effect, it will be found, is due, not to the multiplication of lines, but to the absolute rightness and appropriateness of the comparatively few that are used. The crispness and firmness of the drawing are quite magnificent, and it is satisfactory to know that this marvellous little plate, simple and unsensational as it is, comes third, according to M. Amand Durand, in popularity with the purchasers of reproductions. Yet another masterpiece of the same year is "The Jews' Synagogue" (B. 126); and a fourth etching is "The Marriage of Jason and Creusa" (B. 112), a composition of many figures, made to illustrate his friend Jan Six's tragedy of Medea, published that year, in which, as usual with him, the attempt to convey the classical spirit was scarcely successful.

There is no etching which we can definitely assign to 1649. In 1650, on the other hand, we have six, including four landscapes, to which he again turned his attention after an interval of five years. These are "A Village by the High-Road" (B. 217), with its big tree and high-gabled cottages; the excellent "Village with a Square Tower" (B. 218); the "Canal with Swans" (B. 235); and the sketch of "A Canal with a Large Boat" (B. 236) lying broadside on athwart the foreground, which is, however, chiefly interesting from the background, which has given rise to a question as to whether Rembrandt was about that time on his travels to some place unknown. This hilly distance, with the steep cliff on the left, and the Italian-looking tower in the centre, certainly bears no resemblance to anything in his ordinary surroundings, but there is nothing in it to assure us that it was done from nature, and as we know that he more than once adapted a landscape from some Italian master, generally Titian, it would be rash to found any conclusion on the resemblance.

A remarkable instance of patient and loving care is seen in the "Shell" (B. 159), an astonishingly truthful and minute study of still life, which is equally attractive in the first state against a plain white background, and in the second against a nearly black one, which, however, may have been added by some other hand. The sixth etching of that year, "Christ appearing to the Disciples" (B. 89), is a sketch in outline with a little tentative shading here and there, and, though handled with freedom and boldness, has little of interest or beauty to recommend it.

During 1651 he devoted himself once and once only to each class of work; for there is one subject, "The Flight into Egypt" (B. 53), showing Joseph carrying a lantern, and leading the ass bearing the Virgin and Child through the night; one landscape, "The Goldweigher's Field" (B. 234)—so called from the view including the country-house of his friend Uijtenbogaerd, the treasurer, whose portrait, etched by Rembrandt, is known as "The Goldweigher"; and one portrait, "Clement de Jonghe" (B. 272), one of the best, if not the best, he ever did. Still fewer etchings were produced in 1652, and one of the two, the larger "Christ disputing with the Doctors" (B. 65), is only a sketch—in places, indeed, it degenerates to a mere scrawl—displaying, for Rembrandt, an unwonted amount of indifferent and inexpressive drawing; but the other, a landscape, generally known in England as the "Vista" (B. 222), with the two large trees on the left and the dense wood in the centre, is, perhaps, the finest specimen of work in pure dry-point ever produced.

1653 is, again, a blank as far as dated etchings are concerned, but to 1654 belong eight, seven of which are subjects from the New Testament; a "Circumcision" (B. 47), known as the one with the cask and net; a sketch of "The Holy Family crossing a Rill during the Flight into Egypt" (B. 55), in which the figures are clumsily and unpleasantly thrown into relief by a band of shadow closely following their outlines in very naïve fashion, but which, nevertheless, contains a great deal of bold and expressive drawing; "Jesus and His Parents returning from Jerusalem" (B. 60), in which we have another instance of an altogether foreign landscape, which might as well be adduced in evidence of his foreign travels as that of four years before. In this case, however, it has evidently been so closely copied from an unknown original that there can be no doubt that there is somewhere, or at any rate was then, a drawing of the subject, and there is, furthermore, a very high degree of probability that the drawing was by Titian. The figures are full of movement, and there is, in especial, much animation in the young Christ, who, led by His father, himself leads His mother, turning half backwards as He walks to speak to her, but the types of the heads, especially that of the Virgin Mary, are disagreeably ugly and vulgar. The Virgin in "The Holy Family with the Serpent" (B. 63), has, on the other hand, an unusual amount of grace, but this, it has to be admitted, is due to the fact that it is borrowed from Mantegna, and the plate is otherwise an indifferent piece of work. "Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus" (B. 87) is, again, no more than a sketch, presenting with much vividness the actions of surprise on the part of the two disciples and of the serving-man descending the stairs in front; but here, as so often elsewhere, Rembrandt has failed to rise to any sense of the sublimity or dignity of Christ, and as, in this example, he sits in full face in the very centre of the picture, the fault cannot well be overlooked or condoned. A far more satisfactory production, indeed the best of the year, is "The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight" (B. 83), with its bold drawing and coarse yet effective handling, but, like all the work of 1654, it has serious and obvious defects; while the last to be noted, "The Game of Golf" or Kolf (B. 125), is yet another instance of Rembrandt's contentedly signing a work which would disgrace a man without a tithe of his genius, and is one of those plates which, if it be authentic—and no one else that I know of disputes it—renders any test of genuineness by workmanship impossible.

1655 saw Rembrandt employed once more as an illustrator, the book being one entitled "Piedra gloriosa ò de la estatua de Nebucadnezar," by his friend Manasseh ben Israel, for which he etched four subjects on one plate, afterwards sub-divided—"Jacob's Dream," "The Combat of David and Goliath," "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream," and "The Vision of Ezekiel" (B. 36). "Abraham's Sacrifice" (B. 35), of the same year, is another of those bold and rapid sketches in which Rembrandt seems to have dashed at his subject and realised it by sheer force of energy, caring little about detail, shading where he wanted shadows, and omitting them where he wanted light, without any regard to where light and shade would have been, yet putting such vitality, such genuine, undeniable, human feeling into it, that even bad drawing passes unnoticed. The swirl of the broad-winged angel swooping down from behind on Abraham, grasping his left arm just above he elbow to hold back the knife, while with his right he removes Abraham's right hand from the eyes of the resignedly kneeling Isaac, is marvellous. The startled surprise of Abraham is amazingly true; and, carried away by the vigour of the actions and the sound breadth of the work, we ignore the fact that Abraham is left-handed, and that the angel has no forearm. Another equally bold work in outline is "Christ before Pilate" (B. 76), with its wonderful crowd of figures in the foreground relieved against the platform on which Christ and Pilate stand surrounded by soldiers. The only highly-finished work of the year is the "Portrait of Thomas Jacobsz Haring" (B. 275), known as "The Young Haring," to distinguish it from the etching of his father "The Old Haring."

There are only two etchings dated 1656,—"Abraham entertaining the Angels" (B. 29), in which yet again we have forced upon us the incapacity of Rembrandt's mind to evolve an acceptable supernatural figure, and the splendid "Portrait of Jan Lutma" (B. 276). It is impossible to look on this and doubt that it is an admirable likeness of a delightful old man. With what a shrewd humorous expression he sits in that high-backed arm-chair, surmounted by lions' heads, which figures in so many of Rembrandt's portraits at that time. How broad and easy, yet neither over-laboured nor careless, is the handling. Rembrandt never worked better, and one cannot but feel convinced, in regarding the result, that, to both artist and sitter, the work was a labour of love, and the sittings periods of mutual enjoyment. In this, the last dated portrait we have, he reached the highest pitch of excellence he ever attained.