Very soon they reached the workshop of the artist, and knew what the great man thought of the sketches, for as he looked them over he murmured, “H’m, h’m! Pretty good! The old woman’s head is too small for her body, and a pig never had legs as crooked as that; but he will learn, and if he is willing to work I’ll gladly take him as a pupil.”
So Rembrandt went into the studio of the painter, for his father had come to believe that he was intended for neither a syndic nor a miller. He was so eager to learn that he worked with all his might, and his progress amazed his teacher, who, although he knew he had talent, had not dreamed he could advance so rapidly. Before two years were gone his pictures were better than those of Swannenburg himself, who said sadly one day, “I am no longer the master painter of Leyden.”
But that artist had a great, good heart, and he was so glad to see the boy’s progress that he helped him all he could.
Now it happened, about the time the work of the miller’s son was causing Leyden folk to open their eyes, that Jan Lievens, who was a successful painter in Amsterdam, came home to visit his parents, who were neighbors of Rembrandt’s family. He was greatly excited over the work of his young friend and exclaimed, “You must go back to Amsterdam with me, for the best masters of Holland are there, and you must study with them.”
The idea seemed good to the miller, who was very proud of the progress of his son; so to Amsterdam young Rembrandt went, where he progressed as amazingly as he had done in the studio of Swannenburg. The great harbor city fascinated him, and he loved to roam along its splendid streets watching the people hurrying to and fro or idling in groups on the corners, laughing and chatting in their merry Dutch way; loved to go to the docks where ships came in from the Indies, and to see the sunrise and sunset painting marvelous-hued pictures on the waves of the wild North Sea. Then he would go back to the studio and work, picturing the men and women he saw on his rambles, the mill by the old White Gate, and the market folk he used to watch from the Leyden ramparts. His paintings delighted the great of Amsterdam just as the pigs and chickens he drew on Wilhelmina’s shoes had delighted the boys and girls in the Latin school, and he became rich and famous. He lived in a palace fine enough for a prince, and could have bought whole cargoes of those ships that sailed in from the Indies; and his wealth seemed all the more glorious because he had earned it with the labor of his hand and brain. He married a great and gracious lady, and as his children drove through the streets in their fine carriage the people would say, “See, the son and daughter of Rembrandt van Rijn, the wonderful painter.”
But all his good fortune and all the honors heaped upon him did not make him selfish and overbearing. He never forgot or ceased to love his native Leyden. He lived in the harbor city because it fascinated him and was a better place for an artist than his childhood town, but he never tired of going back to the old home or lost interest in the pigs and cows and the market folk on the Rhine road. Sometimes on these visits he would lie on the ramparts just as he had done when a boy, and strangers journeying to and from The Hague had no idea that the grave-eyed man dreaming there in the shadow of the mill sails was the famous painter of Amsterdam.
Then, one day he died, and they laid him to rest in the harbor city where for so many years he had lived and worked. The people of Leyden asked to have him taken back there, and those who know how he loved it wish it had been done; for it would be pleasant to think of him sleeping in the shadow of the mill sails, and perhaps if he could have been asked he would have wanted it, too.
Years passed, but instead of dimming the glory of Rembrandt’s name they brightened it. After his death his works became priceless, and the world still prizes them just as Amsterdam prized them two hundred years ago. To own a canvas by this king of Dutch painters is to be rich and envied, for it requires a great deal of money to buy one of his paintings. Even the crude drawings of his boyhood are now treasured by princes, and one of the most prized possessions of a great museum in Holland is a pair of wooden shoes. They are brown and clumsy and covered with marks, half of which have been worn away by the staining finger of Time; but a fortune could not buy them, because ever so long ago they were worn by little Wilhelmina van Rijn to the Latin school of Leyden, and were decorated by the hand of a mill boy, and who would not be proud to own them? That mill boy became the immortal Flemish painter, Rembrandt, whose work will be treasured as long as the world loves beautiful things.
THE LADY OF STAVOREN
Retold from a Dutch Legend