A heretic in art Rembrandt was to many of his Dutch contemporaries; to us, he is the master, supreme alike in genius and accomplishment. Because, as time went on, he broke completely from tradition and in his work gave full play to his originality, his pictures were looked at askance; because he chose to live his own life, indifferent to accepted conventions, he himself was misunderstood. It was his cruel fate to enjoy prosperity and popularity in his earlier years, only to meet with neglect in his old age. But this he felt probably less than other men; he was not a courtier, with Velasquez, nor vowed to worldly success, with Rubens. His pleasure and his reward, he found in his work. So long as easel and canvas, brushes and paints were left to him, he demanded no greater happiness.
Marie De Medici at the House of Rubens.
In Leyden, a town already made famous by another master, Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt was born in 1606; though this date has been disputed, some authorities suggesting 1607, others, 1608. His family were respectable, if not distinguished, burghers, his father, Harmen Gerritszoon, being a miller by trade, his mother, Neeltjen Willems of Zuitbroeck, the daughter of a baker. Not until early in the seventeenth century did permanent surnames become common among Dutchmen; hitherto children had been given their father's, in addition to their own Christian name; Rembrandt for many years was known as Rembrandt Harmenzoon, or the son of Harmen. But the miller, to be in the growing fashion, had called himself Van Ryn—of the Rhine—and thus, later on, Rembrandt also signed himself. Harmen was well-to-do; he owned houses in Leyden, and beyond the walls, gardens, and fields, and the mill where Rembrandt, because he once drew a mill, was supposed to have been born. But there was no reason for Neeltjen to move from a comfortable house in town into such rustic quarters, and it is more likely that Rembrandt's birthplace was the house pointed out in the Nordeinde Street. A commercial career had been chosen for his four older brothers. But Harmen, his means allowing the luxury, decided to make of his fifth son a man of letters and learning, and Rembrandt was sent to the University of Leyden. That letters, however, had small charm for him, was clear from the first. Better than his books he loved the engravings of Swanenburch, better still, the pictures of Lucas van Leyden, which he could look at to his heart's content on gala days, when the Town Hall, where they hung, was thrown open to the public. His hours of study were less profitable than his hours of recreation when he rambled in the country, through his father's estate, and, sometimes as far as the sea, a sketch-book, the chances are, for sole companion. Certainly, by the time he was fifteen, so strong were the proofs of his indifference to the classics and his love for art, that his father, sacrificing his own ambitions, allowed Rembrandt to leave the university for the studio of Van Swanenburch. From this day forth, his life's history is told in the single word—work; his indeed was the genius of industry.
Van Swanenburch had studied in Italy; but his own painting, to judge by the few examples still in existence, was entirely commonplace. Three years were more than enough to be passed under his tuition. At the end of the third, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, and there entered the studio of Lastman. His second master also had studied in Italy, and also was a painter of mediocre talent, popular in his own times—the Apelles of the day, he was called—but remembered now chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first, Rembrandt, even if obliged to paint the stock subjects of the day, was determined to treat them in his own way, and not to follow set forms that happened to be adopted in the schools. He used real men and women for models, and painted them as he saw them, not as he was bidden to look at them through his teacher's spectacles. In six months he had learned at least one thing, that Lastman had nothing more to teach him. The man of genius must ever be his own master, though he remain the hard-working student all his days. Back to Leyden and to his father's house, Rembrandt had not returned to lead a life of idleness. He worked tremendously in these early years. Even needed models he found in the members of his family; he has made the face of his mother as familiar as that of a friend; his own, with the heavy features, the thick, bushy hair, the small intelligent eyes, between them the vertical line, fast deepening on the fine forehead, he drew and etched and painted, again and again. More elaborate compositions he also undertook. As in his maturity, it was to the Bible he turned for suggestions: Saint Paul in prison, Samson and Delilah, the Presentation in the Temple—these were the themes then in vogue which he preferred, rendering them with the realism which distinguished his later, more famous Samsons and Abrahams and Christs, making them the motive for a fine arrangement of color, for a striking study of light and shadow. A pleasant picture one can fancy of his life at this period; he was with his own people, for whom his love was tender; busy with brush, pencil, and etching-needle; he was strengthening his powers of observation, developing and perfecting his style, occasionally producing work that won for him renown in Leyden; and, gradually, he gathered round him a small group of earnest fellow-workers, chief among them Lievens, Gerard Dou, and Van Vliet, the last two, though but slightly his juniors, looking up to him as master. These were the years of his true apprenticeship.
Leyden, however, was not the best place for a young painter who had his fortunes to make. It was essentially a university town; interest was concentrated upon letters; art was but of secondary consideration. It was different in Amsterdam, the great commercial centre of Holland. There, all was life and activity and progress; there, was money to be spent, and the liberal patron willing to lavish it upon the artist. Holland just then was in the first flush of prosperity and patriotism, following upon her virtual independence from Spain. Not a citizen but glowed with self-respect at the thought of the victory he had, in one way or another, helped to win; the state, as represented by the good burghers, was supreme in every man's mind. It was natural that individuals and corporations alike should seek to immortalize their greatness by means of the painter's art, which, in Holland, had long since ceased to be a monopoly of the church. Hence the age became essentially one of portrait-painting. Many were the painters whose portraits had already achieved distinction. De Keyser was busy in Amsterdam; a far greater genius, Franz Hals, but fifteen years Rembrandt's senior, was creating his masterpieces in The Hague and Harlem. It was as inevitable that Rembrandt should turn to portraiture, as that he should find commissions less numerous in Leyden than in Amsterdam. Often in the latter town his services were required; so often, indeed, that at last, about 1631, when he was just twenty-five, he settled there permanently and set up a studio of his own.
Success was his from the start. Sitter after sitter sought him out in his house on the Bloemgracht; the most distinguished men in the town hastened to patronize him. His work was liked by the burghers whom he painted, its strength was felt by artists, whose canvases soon showed its influence. Admirers crowded to his studio. He had not been in Amsterdam a twelvemonth when, before he was yet twenty-six, he was entrusted with an order of more than usual importance. This was the portrait of Dr. Tulp and his class of surgeons: the famous "Lesson in Anatomy" now in the Gallery at The Hague. The subject at the time was very popular. Many artists, De Keyser among others, had already, in painting prominent surgeons, placed them around the subject they were dissecting; indeed, this was the arrangement insisted upon by the surgeons themselves, and, as there seems to have been no limit to their vanity, "Lessons in Anatomy" were almost as plentiful in Holland as "Madonnas" in Umbria. Rembrandt in his composition was simply adhering to accepted tradition. It is true that he instilled life into a group hitherto, on other painters' canvases, stiff and perfunctory; but, though the picture was a wonderful production for a man of his years, it is not to be ranked with his greatest work.
Commissions now poured in still faster. It was at this time he painted several of his best known portraits: the "Master Shipbuilder and his Wife," at present in Buckingham Palace; that simply marvellous old woman at the National Gallery in London, made familiar to everyone by countless photographs and other reproductions; the man in ruff and woman in coif at the Brunswick Museum; and a score of others scarce less important. With increasing popularity, he was able to command his own prices, so that only a part of his time was it necessary for him to devote to the portraits which were his chief source of income. During the leisure he reserved, he painted biblical subjects, ever his delight, and made etchings and drawings, today the most prized treasures in the world's great galleries. As in Leyden, he drew about him students; a few, notably Ferdinand Bol and Christophe Paudiss, destined, in their turn, to gain name and fame. Indifferent to social claims and honors—an indifference the burghers, his patrons, found it hard to forgive, his one amusement was in collecting pictures and engravings, old stuffs and jewels, and every kind of bric-à-brac, until his house in Amsterdam was a veritable museum. This amusement later was to cost him dear.