Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.
"The costume and rapid execution of this magnificent picture point rather," says Sir Edward Poynter, "to its being a study than a portrait painted on commission." Probably also the title by which the picture has long been known is a mistake: a Burgomaster would not be painted in such dingy and fantastic garb. The old man was no doubt a model dressed up by Rembrandt in studio "properties." The knotted stick which he holds in his hands may be recognised in the painter's portrait of himself in Lord Ilchester's possession (No. 61 in the Academy Exhibition of 1899). That portrait is dated 1658, and this picture probably belongs to the same period. The picturesque but nondescript headgear worn by the "burgomaster" may have belonged to the master himself in those latter days when all relics of the former splendours had vanished. Whoever he may have been, the "Burgomaster," as he lives for ever on Rembrandt's canvas, is a striking personage; the refined, intellectual face recalls to some spectators one of the late ornaments of the Episcopal Bench in our own day. The portrait is a masterpiece alike of character-reading and of modelling.
1675. PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY.
Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.
A noble portrait. Rembrandt was a painter who reverenced old age, and gave its dignity and beauty to faces the least promising. We may notice especially the pathetic eyes,—with an expression at once so living and so sorrowful, and the character in the hands which Rembrandt never failed to give his sitters. The old lady wears a large white ruff, "evidently clinging to the costume of her earlier years, for ruffs had long been out of fashion at the time when the picture was painted." The picture has been known as the Burgomaster's Wife, but this description is without authority or probability. There is another portrait of the same old lady in Lord Wantage's possession (No. 15 in the Academy Exhibition, 1899). Lord Wantage's picture is dated 1661.
The two magnificent pictures just described, which hold their own triumphantly even on a wall of masterpieces,[251] were formerly in possession of Sir William Middleton, Bart., great-uncle to Lady de Saumarez, and were exhibited at the British Institution in 1858. Since that date they had been lost to sight until they were purchased for the National Gallery in 1899.[252] They are believed to have been in possession of the Lee family, Lady de Saumarez's ancestors, from the time that they were painted, but they may have come into the family with a certain John van Enkoren, a Dutch gentleman, who married a second cousin of Sir William Middleton.
1676. CHRIST DISPUTING WITH THE DOCTORS.
Francesco de Herrera, the elder (Spanish: 1576-1656).
Francesco de Herrera, the elder—so called to distinguish him from a son of the same name who was also a painter—was the first to throw off the timid conventional style hitherto in vogue, and to adopt the bold and vigorous manner which became characteristic of the school of Seville. He drew, we are told, with charred reeds, and painted with a housepainter's brush. It is said that on occasions he would employ a servant to smear the paints on his canvas with a coarse brush, and then himself shape the rough masses into figures and draperies. In the Louvre there is an important picture by Herrera, "St. Basil dictating his Doctrine," of which Théophile Gautier said that it was "dashed off with an unimaginable fury of the brush, and blazed with the flashing of some auto-da-fè." In the Earl of Clarendon's Collection are three powerful pictures (shown at the New Gallery, 1895-96) representing scenes in the life of St. Bonaventura. But most of Herrera's extant works, in oil and fresco, remain at Seville. The vigour of his style was equalled by the impetuosity of his temper. Pupils flocked round him, but the violence of his outbursts drove them away. Among this number was Velazquez. He perverted his talent as an engraver of medals to the work of coining, and when suspected of this offence fled for sanctuary to the Jesuits' College. There he painted a picture which was shown to Philip IV. "What need," said the King, "has a man gifted with abilities like yours of silver and gold? Go, you are free; and take care that you do not get into this scrape again." He could not, however, change his violent habits, and his children, we are told, robbed him and fled from his house. In 1650 Herrera removed to Madrid, where he had the pleasure, or mortification, of seeing his former pupil, Velazquez, at the height of his fame.
A work in the painter's less impetuous style, but marked by the vigour characteristic of the Spanish and Italian "naturalists."