Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/78

 244 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS my spirit, I do not seek honors, but liberty," was his explanation. The compan ionship of artists he always welcomed ; sometimes he visited the humbler burgh- ers, whose ways were as simple as his own ; sometimes he sought the humblest classes of all, because of their picturesqueness, and his contemporaries took hirr. to task for his perverted taste for low company. The truth is that always he de- voted himself solely and wholly to his art ; the only difference, once he was mar- ried, was that, when he sat at his easel all day or over his copperplate, and sketch- book all evening, Saskia was with him. She shared all his interests, all his am- bitions ; she had no will but his. During his working hours, she was his model, obedient to his call. She never tired of posing for him, nor he of painting her : now simply as Saskia, now as Delilah feasting with Samson, as Susanna sur. prised by the Elders, as the Jewish Betrothed at her toilet. Sometimes he repre- sented her alone, sometimes with himself at her side ; once, in the famous Dres- den portrait, on his knee, as if to proclaim the love they bore for one another. And he, who could render faithfully the ways of the beggar, the austere black of the burgher, for himself and Saskia found no masquerading too gay or ex- travagant. In inventing costumes for their own portraits, he gave his exuberant fancy free play : in gorgeous embroidered robes, waving plumes, and priceless gems they arrayed themselves, until even the resources of his collection were ex- hausted : the same rich mantle, the same jewels appear, and reappear in picture after picture. Rembrandt's short married years were happy, though not without their sor rows. Of Saskia's five children, four died in infancy ; the fifth, Titus, was not a year old when, in 1642, the end came for Saskia, and Rembrandt, who had just reached his thirty-seventh year, was left in his great house alone with an infant son and his pupils. Her confidence in him is shown by her will, in which the inheritance of Titus is left in the father's charge, though already Rembrandt's affairs must have given signs of coming complications. Much of his best work remained to be done, but after Saskia's death his worldly fortunes and his popularity never again touched such high-water mark. The reason for this is not far to seek. During all these years, Rembrandt's pow- ers had matured, his methods broadened, and his individuality strengthened. With each new canvas, his originality became more conspicuous. It was not only that the world of nature, and not imagination, supplied his models. Many of the Dutch painters now were no less realists than he. It was not only that he solved certain problems of chiaro oscuro, there were men, like Lievens, who were as eager as he in the study of light and shadow. But Rembrandt brought to his every experiment an independence that startled the average man. He painted well because he saw well. If no one else saw things as he did, the loss was theirs. But he paid for his keener vision ; because he did not paint like other artists, his methods were mistrusted. To be misunderstood is the penalty of genius. The picture which, of all his work, is now the most famous, marks the turn in the tide of his affairs. Shortly before Saskia's death, he had been commissioned to paint a portrait group of Banning Cock and the militarv com