Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/83

 REMBRANDT '245 pany which he commanded. These portrait groups of the military, corporations rivalled in popularity the " Lessons in Anatomy." Each member, or officer, paid to be included in the composition, and, as a rule, a stiff, formal picture, with each individual posed as for a photograph, was the result Rembrandt, appar- ently, was in nowise restricted when he undertook the work for Banning Cock, and so, instead of the stupid, hackneyed arrangement, he made of the portrait of the company a picture of armed men marching forth to beating of drums and waving of banners, "The Night Watch," as it must ever be known — more ac- curately, "The Sortie of the Company of Banning Cock " — now in the Ryks Mu- seum of Amsterdam. With the men for whom it was painted, it proved a failure. The grouping, the arrangement displeased them. Many of the com- pany were left in deep shadow, which was not the privilege for which they had agreed to pay good money. Rembrandt was not the man to compromise. After this many burghers, who cared much for themselves and their own faces, and not in the least for art, were afraid to entrust their portraits to him lest their importance might be sacrificed to the painter's effects. Certain it is that six years later, in 1648, when the independence of Holland was formally recognized at the Congress of Westphalia, though Terburg and Van der Heist celebrated the event on canvas, Rembrandt's services were not secured. Good friends were left to him — men of intelligence who appreciated his strong individuality and the great originality of his work. Banning Cock himself was not among the discon- tented. A few leading citizens, like Dr. Tulp and the Burgomeister Six, were ever his devoted patrons. Artists still gathered about him ; pupils still crowded to his studio ; Nicolas Maes, De Gelder, Kneller among them. Many of his finest portraits — those of Hendrickje Stoffels, of his son, of himself in his old age, of the Burgomeister Six, above all, his masterpiece, " The Syndics of the Guild of Clothmakers," now in Amsterdam ; many of his finest etchings, the little land- scapes, the famous " Hundred Guilder Print," "Christ Healing the Sick," belong to this later period. There was no falling off, but rather an increase, in his powers, despite the clouds that darkened his years of middle age. Of these clouds, the darkest was due to his financial troubles. Rembrandt had made large sums of money ; Saskia's dowry had been by no means small But he also spent lavishly. He had absolutely no business capacity. Once he was accused of miserliness ; that he would at times lunch on dry bread and a herring served as reproach against him ; there was a story current that his pupils would drop bits of paper painted to look like money in order to see him stoop to pick them up. Both charges are too foolish to answer seriously. When he was at work, it mattered little to him what he ate, so that he was not disturbed ; who would not stoop to pick up coins apparently scattered on the floor ? The money he devoted to his collection is sufficient to show how small a fancy he had for hoarding ; upon it a princely fortune had been squandered. To his own peo- ple in Leyden, when times were hard, he had not been slow to hold out a gen- erous hand. It was because he was not enough of a miser, because he gave too little heed to business matters, that difficulties at length overwhelmed him. It