to live with him, for we find her claiming a chest as her property
at his sale in 1658. Doubtless she is the peasant girl of Rasdorf
to whom Houbraken says Rembrandt was married. Sad as the
story is, Hendrickje has an interest for us. Bode asserts that in
his art there was always a woman in close relationship to Rembrandt
and appearing in his work—his mother, his sister and
then Saskia.
He also suggests that the beautiful portrait of the “Lady” in the Salon Carré of the Louvre and the “Venus and Cupid” of the same gallery may represent Hendrickje and her child. Both pictures belong to this date, and by their treatment are removed from the category of Rembrandt’s usual portraits. But if this is conjecture, we get nearer to fact when we look at the picture exhibited at Burlington House in 1883 to which tradition has attached the name of “Rembrandt’s Mistress,” now in the Edinburgh National Gallery. At a glance one can see that it is not the mere head of a model, as she lies in bed raising herself to put aside a curtain as if she heard a well-known footstep. It is clearly a woman in whom Rembrandt had a personal interest. The date is clearly 165— the fourth figure being illegible; but the brilliant carnations and masterly touch connect it with the “Potiphar’s Wife” of 1654 and the jaghers period. In 1656 Rembrandt’s financial affairs became more involved, and the Orphans’ Chamber transferred the house and ground to Titus, though Rembrandt was still allowed to take charge of Saskia’s estate. Nothing, however, could avert the ruin of the painter, who was declared bankrupt in July 1656, an inventory of all his property being ordered by the Insolvency Chamber. The first sale took place in 1657 in the Keizerskroon hotel; and the second in 1658, when the larger part of the etchings and drawings were disposed of—“collected by Rembrandt himself with much love and care,” says the catalogue. The sum realized, under 5000 guilders, was but a fraction of their value. The time was unfavourable over the whole of Europe for such sales, the renowned collection of Charles I. of England having brought but a comparatively small sum in 1653. Driven thus from his house, stripped of everything he possessed, even to his table linen, Rembrandt took a modest lodging in the same Keizerskroon hostelry (the amounts of his bills are on record), apparently without friends and thrown entirely on himself.
But this dark year of 1656 stands out prominently as one in which some of his greatest works were produced, as, for example, “John the Baptist preaching in the Wilderness,” of the Berlin Gallery, and “Jacob blessing the Sons of Joseph,” of the Cassel Gallery. It is impossible not to respect the man who, amid the utter ruin of his affairs, could calmly conceive and carry out such noble work. Yet even in his art one can see that the tone of his mind was sombre. Instead of the brilliancy of 1654 we have for two or three years a preference for dull yellows, reds and greys, with a certain uniformity of tone. The handling is broad and rapid, as if to give utterance to the ideas which crowded on his mind. There is less caressing of colour for its own sake, even less straining after vigorous effect of light and shade. Still the two pictures just named are among the greatest works of the master. To the same year belongs the “Lesson in Anatomy of Johann Deyman.” The subject is similar to the great Tulp of 1632 but his manner and power of colour had advanced so much that Sir Joshua Reynolds in his visit to Holland in 1781, was reminded by it of Michelangelo and Titian.[1] Vosmaer ascribes to the same year, though Bode places it later, the famous “Portrait of Jan Six,” the future burgomaster, consummate in its ease and character, as Six descends the steps of his house drawing on his glove. The Connexion between Rembrandt and the great family of Six was long and close. In 1641, the mother of Six, Anna Wymer, had been painted with consummate skill by Rembrandt, who also executed in 1647 the beautiful etching of Six standing by a window reading his tragedy of Medea, afterwards illustrated by his friend. Now he paints his portrait in the prime of manhood, and in the same year of gloom paints for him the masterly “John the Baptist.” Six, if he could not avert the disaster of Rembrandt’s life, at least stood by him in the darkest hour, when certainly the creative energy of Rembrandt was in full play. The same period gives us the “Master of the Vineyard,” and the “Adoration of the Magi” of Buckingham Palace.
After the sale of the house in the Breedstraat, Rembrandt retired to the Rosengracht, an obscure quarter at the west end of the city. We are now drawing to the splendid close of his career in his third manner, in which his touch became broader, his impasto more solid and his knowledge more complete. we may mention the “Old Man with the Grey Beard” of the National Gallery (1657) and the “Bruyningh, the Secretary of the Insolvents’ Chamber,” of Cassel (1658), both leading up to the great portraits of the “Syndics of the Cloth Hall” of 1661. Nearly thirty years separate us from, the “Lesson in Anatomy,” years of long-continued observation and labour. The knowledge thus gathered, the problems solved, the mastery attained, are shown here in abundance. Rembrandt returns to the simplest gamut of colour, but shows his skill in the use of it, leaving on the spectator an impression of absolute enjoyment of the result, unconscious of the means. The plain burghers dealing with the simple concerns of their gild arrest our attention as if they were the makers of history. The live for ever; and we close our eyes to the strange perspective of the table.
In his old age Rembrandt continued to paint his own portrait as assiduously as in his youthful and happy days. About twenty of these portraits are known; a typical one is to be found in the National Gallery. All show the same self-reliant expression, though broken down indeed by age and the cares of a hard life.
About the year 1663 Rembrandt painted the (so-called) “Jewish Bride” of the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, and the “Family Group” of Brunswick, the last and perhaps the most brilliant works of his life, bold and rapid in execution and marvellous in the subtle 'mixture and play of colours in which he seems to revel. The woman and children are painted with such love that the impression is conveyed that they represent a fancy family group of the painter in his old age. This idea received some confirmation from the supposed discovery that he left a widow Catherine Van Wyck and two children, but this theory falls to the ground, for de Roever has shown (Oud Holland, 1883) that Catherine was the widow of a marine painter Theunisz Blanckerhoff, who died about the same time as Rembrandt. The mistake arose from a miscopying of the register. The subject of these pictures is thus more mysterious than ever.
In 1668 Titus, the only son of Rembrandt, died, leaving one child, and on the 8th of October 1669 the great painter himself passed away, leaving two children, and was buried in the Wester Kerk. He had outlived his popularity, for his manner of painting, as we know from contemporaries, was no longer in favour with a people who preferred the smooth trivialities of Van der Werff and the younger Mieris, the leaders of an expiring school.
We must give but a short notice of Rembrandt’s achievements in etching. Here he stands out by universal confession as first, excelling by his unrivalled technical skill, his mastery of expression and the lofty conceptions of many of his great pieces, as in the “Death of the Virgin,” the “Christ Preaching,” the “Christ Healing the Sick” (the “Hundred Guilder Print”), the “Presentation to the People,” the “Crucifixion” and others. So great is his skill simply as an etcher that one is apt to overlook the nobleness of the etcher’s ideas and the depth of his nature, and this tendency has been doubtless confirmed by the enormous difference in money value between “states” of the same plate, rarity giving in many cases a factitious worth in the eyes of collectors. A single impression of one of his etchings—“Rembrandt with a Sabre”—realized £2000 at the Holford sale in 1893, when “Ephraim Bonus, with black ring” fetched £1950, and the “Hundred Guilder Print,” £1750. The points of difference between these states arise from the additions and changes made by Rembrandt on the plate; and the prints taken off by him have been subjected to the closest inspection by Bartsch, Gersaint, Wilson, Daulby, De Claussin, C. Blanc, Willshire, Seymour Haden, Middleton and others, who have described them at great length, and to whom the reader is referred. The classification of Rembrandt’s etchings adopted till lately was according to the subject, as Biblical, portrait, landscape, and so on; until Vosmaer attempted the more scientific and interesting line of chronology. This method has been developed by Sir F. Seymour Haden and Middleton. But even in 1873 C. Blanc, in his fine work L’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt, still adheres to the older and less intelligent arrangement, resting his preference on the frequent absence of dates on the etchings and more strangely still on the equality of the work. Sir Seymour Haden’s reply is “that the more important etchings which may be taken as types are dated, and that, the style of the etchings at different periods of Rembrandt’s career being fully as marked as that of his paintings, no more
- ↑ This picture has had a strange history. It had suffered by fire and was sold to a Mr Chaplin of London in 1841, was exhibited in Leeds in 1868, and again disappeared, ultimately to be found in the storeroom of the South Kensington Museum as a doubtful Rembrandt. The patriotism of some Dutch lovers of art restored it to its native country; and it now hangs, a magnificent fragment, in the museum of Amsterdam.
