Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/75

 REMBRANDT 24i 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. In Leyden, a town already made famous by another master. Lucas van Lcy- den, Rembrandt was born in 1606; though this i^^^^^i. date has been disputed, some authorities suggest* ing 1607, others, 1608. His family were respect- able, if not distinguished, burghers, his father, Har- men Gerritszoon, being a miller by trade, his moth- er, 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 giv- en 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 Univer- sity 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 Rem- brandt 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, Rem- brandt 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 tal- ent, popular in his own times — the Apelles of the day, he was called — but re- membered now chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first, 16