Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/395

Rh REMBRANDT 377 (the amounts of his bills are in record), apparently without friends and thrown entirely on himself. But there was no failure here, for this dark year of 1656 stands out pro- minently as one in which some of his greatest works were produced, as, for example, John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness, belonging to Lord Dudley, 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 measure of 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, another of the many men of science with whom Rembrandt was closely associated. 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 burgo- master, 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, and is honourable to both. Jan married a daughter of Tulp the anatomist, one of Rembrandt's earliest friends. 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 Bucking- ham 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. Vosmaer thinks he has traced the very house, but some doubts have been thrown on this dis- covery by De Roever. 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. Hastening on by quicker steps, 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. Tho 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 1 This picture has had a strange history. It had suffered by fii-e und 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 magazines 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. impression of absolute enjoyment of the result, unconscious of the means. The plain burghers dealing with the simple concerns of their guild arrest our attention as if they were the makers of history. They live for ever. 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 being 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. There is in Stockholm a large and unfinished picture which, if painted by Rembrandt, belongs to the late years of his life (etched by Waltner, Gaz. des Beaux-Arts, Nov. 1874). It is catalogued as the Oath of John Ziska, certainly a strange subject for Rem- brandt. Bode accepts the more natural interpretation of Prof. Anton Springer, viz., the Feast of Judas Maccabseus, and ascribes the picture to an earlier date than that given by Vosmaer. Havard, however, after careful examination, attributes the work to Carel Fabritius. About the year 1663 Rembrandt painted the (so-called) Jewish Bride of the Van der Hoop Gallery and the Family Group of Brunswick, the last and perhaps the most brilliant works of his life, bold and rapid in execution and marvel- lous 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 repre- sent a fancy family group of the painter in his old age. This idea received some confirmation from the supposed dis- covery 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 8th October 1669 the great painter him- self 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 Kembrandt's achievements in etching. Here he stands out by xinivcrsal confession as first, excelling all 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 tho enormous difference in money value between " states " of the same plati>, rarity giving in many cases a fictitious worth in the eyes of collectors. The points of difference between these states arise from the additions and changes made by Rembrandt on the plate ; and the prints tajcen 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 the artificial one of treating them according to the subject, as Biblical, portrait, landscape, and so on; and to Vosmaer must be ascribed the credit of being the first to view Rembrandt's etched work, as he has done his work in painting, in the more scientific and interesting line of chronology. This method has been developed by Mr Seymour Haden and Mr Middleton, and is now universally accepted. But even so recently as 1873 M. C. Blanc, in his fine work L'CEuwc completde 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. Mr Seymour Haden's reply is conclusive, "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 difficulty attends the classification XX. 48