and above all light were the aims of these studies. His mother
was a frequent model, and we can trace in her features the strong
likeness to her son, especially in the portraits of himself at an
advanced age. In the collection of Rembrandt's works at
Amsterdam in 1898 were shown three portraits of his father, who
died about 1632; nine are catalogued altogether. The last
portrait of his mother is that of the Vienna Museum, painted the
year before her death in 1640. One of his sisters also frequently
sat to him, and Bode suggests that she must have accompanied
him to Amsterdam and kept house for him till he married.
This conjecture rests on the number of portraits of the same
young woman painted in the early years of his stayin Amsterdam
and before he met his bride. Then, again, in the many portraits
of himself painted in his early life we can see with what zeal he
set himself to master every form of expression, now grave, now
gay-how thoroughly he learned to model the human face not
from the outside but from the inner man. Dr Bode gives fifty
as the number of the portraits of himself (perhaps sixty is nearer
the actual number), most of them painted in youth and in old
age, the times when he had leisure for such work.
Rembrandt's earliest pictures were painted at Leiden, from
1627 to 1631. Bode mentions about nine pictures as known to
belong to these years, chiefly paintings of single hgurts, as
“ St Paul in Prison ” and “ St lerome ”; but now and then
compositions of several, as “ Samson in Prison " and “ Presentation
in the Temple.” The prevailing tone of all these pictures
is a greenish grey, the effect being somewhat cold and heavy.
The gallery at Cassel gives us a typical example of his studies
of the heads of old men, firm and hard in workmanship and full
of detail, the effects of light and shade being carefully thought
out. His work was now attracting the attention of lovers of
art in the great city of Amsterdam; and, urged by their calls,
he removed about 1631 to live and die there. At one bound
he leaped into the position of the first portrait painter of the
city, and received numerous commissions. During the early
years of his residence there are at least forty known portraits
from his hand, firm and solid in manner and staid in expression.
It has been remarked that the fantasy in which he indulged
through life was reserved only for the portraits of himself and
his immediate Connexions. The excellent painter Thomas de
Keyser was then in the height of his power, and his influence
is to be traced in some of Rembrandt's smaller portraits. Pupils
also now flocked to his house in the Bloemgracht, among them
Gerard Douw, who was nearly of his own age. The first
important work executed by Rembrandt in Amsterdam is
“Simeon in the Temple, ” of the Hague Museum, a fine early
example of his treatment of light and shade and of his subtle
colour. The concentrated light falls on the principal figure,
while the background is full of mystery. The surface is smooth
and enamel-like, and all the details are carefully wrought out,
while the action of light on the mantle of Simeon shows how
soon he had felt the magical effect of the play of colour. In the
life-sized “ Lesson in Anatomy ” of 1632 we have the first of
the great portrait subjects-Tulp the anatomist, the early
friend of Rembrandt, discoursing to his seven associates, who
are ranged with eager heads round the foreshortened body.
The subject had been treated in former years by the Mierevelts,
A. Pietersen and others, for the Hall of the Surgeons. But it
was reserved for Rembrandt to make it a great picture by the
grouping of the expressive portraits and by the completeness
of the conception. The colour is quiet and the handling of the
brush timid and precise, while the light and shade are somewhat
harsh and abrupt. But it is a marvellous picture for a young
man of twenty-five, and it is generally accepted as marking a
new departure in the career of the painter.
About Joo pictures are known to have come from Rembrandt's own han . It is impossible to notice more than the prominent works. Besides the Pellicorne family portraits of 1632 now in the Wallace Collection, we have the calligraphist Cop nol of the Cassel Gallery, interesting in the first place as an earl; example of Rembrandts method of giving permanent interest to a portrait by converting it into a picture. He invests it with a sense of life by a momentary expression as Coppenol raises his head towards the spectator while he is mending a quill. The same motive is to be found in the “ Shipbuilder, " 1633 (Buckingham Palace), who looks up from his work with a sense of interruption at the approach of his wife. Coppenol was painted thrice and etched twice by the artist, the last of whose portrait etchings (1661) was the Coppenol of large size. The two small pictures of “The Philosopher " of the Lénuvre date fam 1633, delicate in execution and full of mysterious e ect.
The year 1634 is especially remarkable as that of Rembrandt's marriage with Saskia van Uylenborch, a beautiful, fair-haired Frisian maiden of good connexions. Till her death in 1642 she was the centre of his life and art, and lives for us in many a canvas as well as in her own portraits. On her the painter lavished his magical power, painting her as the Queen Artemisia or Bathsheba, and as the wife of Samson-always proud of her long fair locks, and covering her with pearls and gold as precious in their play of colour as those of the Indies. A joyous pair we see them in the Dresden Gallery, Saskia sitting on his knee while he laughs gaily, or promenading together in a fine picture of 1636, or putting the last touches of ornament to her toilette, for thus Bode interprets the so-called “ Burgomaster Pancras and his Wife.” These were his happy days when he painted himself in his exuberant fantasy, and adorned himself, at least in his portraits, in scarfs and feathers and gold chains. Saskia brought him a marriage portion of forty thousand guilders, a large sum for those times, and she brought him also a large circle of good friends in Amsterdam. She bore him four children, Rumbartus and two girls, successively named Cornelia after his beloved mother, all of whom died in infancy, and Titus, named after Titia a sister of Saskia. We have several noble portraits of Saskia, a good type of the beauty of Holland, all painted with the utmost love and care, at Cassel (1633), at Dresden (1641), and a posthumous one (1643) at Berlin. But the greatest in workmanship and most pathetic in expression seems to us, though it is decried by Bode, that of Antwerp (1641), in which it is impossible not to trace declining health and to find a melancholy presage of her death.
One of Rembrandts greatest portraits of 1633 is the superb full length of Martin Daey, which, witl1 that of Ma ame Daey, painted according to Vosmaer some years later, formed one of the ornaments of the Van Loon collection at Amsterdam. Both now belong to Baron Gustave de Rothschild. From the firm detailed execution of this portrait one turns with wonder to the broader handling of the “ Old Woman " (Frangoise van /Vasserhoven), aged eighty-three, in the National Gallery, of the same year, remarkable for the effect of reflected light and still more for the sympathetic rendering of character. .
The life of Samson supplied many subjects in these early days. The so-called “ Count of Gueldres threatening his Father-in-law " of the Berlin Gallery has been restored to its proper signification by M. Kolloff, who finds it to be Samson. It is forced and violent in its action. The greatest of this series, and one of the prominent Eictures of Rembrandt's work, is the “ Marriage of Samson, " of the resden Gallery, painted in 1638. Here Rembrandt gives the rem to his imagination and makes the scene live before us. Except the bride (Saskia), who sits calm and grand on a dais in the centre of the feast, with the full light again playing on her flowing locks and wealth of jewels, all is animated and full of bustle. Samf son, evidently a Rembrandt of fantasy, leans over a chair propound mg his riddle to the Philistine lords. In execution it is a great advance on former subject pictures; it is bolder in manner, and we have here signs of his approaching love of warmer tones of red and yellow.
The story of Susannah also occupied him in these early years, and he returned to the subject in 1641 and 1653. “The Bather ” of the National Gallery may be another interpretation of the same theme. In all of these pictures the woman is coarse in type and lumpy in form, though the modelling is soft and round, the effect which Rembrandt always strove to Igain. Beauty of form was outside his art. But the so-called “ anae ” (1636) at St Petersburg is a sufficient reiply to those who deny his ability ever to appreciate the beauty o the nude female form. It glows with colour and life, and the blood seems to pulsate under the warm skin. In the picturesque story of Tobit Rembrandt found much to interest him, as we see in the beautiful small picture of the d'Arenberg Collection at Brussels: Sight is being restored to the aged Tobias, while with infinite tenderness his wife holds the old man's hand cares singly. The momentary action is complete, and the picture goes straight to the heart. In the Berlin Gallery he paints the anxiety of the parents as they wait the return of their son. In 1637 he painted the fine picture now in the Louvre of the “ Flight of the Angel "; and the same subject is grandly treated by him.
