Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/45

REM  of his effects of light and shade are supposed to have been derived from the pictorial impressions left upon his mind by his early experiences in his father's mill. His father's name was Herman Gerritszoon, or abbreviated Gerritsz, which is not a surname, but signifies simply, the son of Gerrit; just as Hermanszoon signifies simply, the son of Herman. The father was a miller or maltster, and is said to have possessed a mill between Leiderdorp and Koudekerk. This is now doubted, as it is ascertained that he possessed half of a malt mill in Leyden itself in the Weddesteeg, where Rembrandt is now assumed to have been born. Our young painter seems to have met with early success. In 1630, when little more than twenty years of age, he settled in Amsterdam; and there married, 22nd June, 1634, Saskia Uilenburg, who appears to have been possessed of a considerable fortune, which, however, was settled on her children, after her husband's death, or in case of his second marriage. She had two children: one died early; the other, a son, Titus, succeeded to his mother's property. She died in 1642, and as Rembrandt married a second time, the necessity of paying over his son's inheritance, and his own extravagant habits as a collector of drawings and other objects of art, together probably with hard times, involved him in overwhelming difficulties, and in 1656 he was publicly declared insolvent. His son took possession of the house in the Joden-Breestraat, and eventually recovered what was due to him in 1665—about £600; but Rembrandt from this time to his death seems to have remained in poverty and in comparative obscurity. The stories about his miserly propensities, originally spread by Honbraken, but greatly exaggerated by modern writers and romancers, appear to be pure scandal. Rembrandt died in the beginning of October, 1669. This date was lately discovered by Dr. Scheltema, keeper of archives at Amsterdam, who found in the burial register of the west church (Westerkerk) the following entry:—"Tuesday, 8th October, 1669.—Rembrandt van Rhyn, painter, on the Rosecanal, opposite the Labyrinth. Leaves behind two children." Rembrandt was one of the most original and able painters who ever lived; he excelled chiefly in colour and in light and shade, and was also a perfect master in execution. Except where refinement of taste in form was required, his powers were almost magical; and he was as remarkable for his etchings as for his pictures. He is seen to great advantage in the national galleries of Amsterdam, the Hague, and London. His pictures date from 1627 to 1669. The National gallery has signed examples from 1640 to 1666, showing all his styles, elaborate, careful, and coarse, in small and large figures, including two interesting portraits of himself, at an interval of nearly thirty years between them. His wonderful etchings, amounting to nearly four hundred, bear dates from 1628 to 1661. Both these and his pictures are too vast a subject to be entered upon with further detail here. He had many scholars and imitators, who approached him very closely in manner, as G. Van der Eeckhout, F. Bol, G. Flinck, and others.—(See Scheltema, Remhrand-Redevoeringh, &c., 1853, or the French translation of W. Bürger, Rembrandt,  Discours sur sa vie, &c., Brussels, 1859. A list of his works was published by Josi in Amsterdam in 1810. See also Burnet, Rembrandt and his Works, 1841; Wornum, Epochs of  Painting, &c., 1859; and the Catalogue of the National Gallery, ed. 36, 1862.)—R. N. W.  REMIGIUS or REMI, the apostle of the Franks, was raised to the see of Rheims about 460, at which time (as he died in 533 at the age of ninety-five) he must have been about twenty-two years of age. He baptized Clovis, and is said to have converted great numbers of the Franks.  REMIGIUS, Archbishop of Lyons, a native of Gaul, became grand almoner to the Emperor Lothaire; and his influence with him and with Charles le Chauve proved of great advantage to the church. Remigius was a strenuous supporter of the doctrines of Gotteschalcus. He presided at the council of Valence in 855, and the canons then enacted in favour of Gotteschalcus were confirmed by a synod held at Langres in 859, at which he also presided. He died in 875.  REMIGIUS, surnamed, from his having been master of the schools connected with the monastery of St. Germain at Auxerre. Foulques, the successor of Hincmar in the see of Rheims, founded a literary seminary in the city, the management of which he intrusted to Remigius. Afterwards he went to Paris, where he opened the first public school in the city; and died in 900.  REMUS. See.  * REMUSAT,, Count de, author and politician, was born at Paris in 1797, of parents who stood high in the favour of Napoleon I. and the Empress Josephine. Educated for the Paris bar, of which he became a member, M. de Remusat contributed to the periodical and newspaper press, and was one of the Parisian journalists, who recorded their protest against the ordinances of Charles X., which provoked the revolution of the Three Days. Under the government of Louis Philippe he achieved a parliamentary reputation, and during Thiers' brief premiership of 1840, M. de Remusat was minister of the interior. After the revolution of February, he belonged to the conservative majority in the constituent assembly, but had to retire into private life with the coup d'état. Better known in literature than in politics, M. de Remusat is the author of many works, all of them solid and scholarly, and in which is traceable the influence of Cousin. Among them is the remarkable study, "Abélard," 1845; the Life and Times of Anselm ("Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry"), 1852; "L'Angleterre au dix-huitième siècle, études et portraits," a work very interesting to English readers, with its careful sketches of Bolingbroke, Horace Walpole, Junius, Burke, and Fox. One of the latest of M. de Remusat's elaborate, conscientious, and thoughtful works is also devoted to an English theme, "Bacon, sa vie, son temps, sa philosophie, et son influence jusqu'a nos jours," 1858.—F. E.  REMUSAT,, a sinologist, was born in Paris in 1788, of a very respectable family. When a child he fell from the terrace of the Tuileries to the quay of the Seine, and suffered in consequence a confinement of several years, during which he read and learned with eagerness. Intended for the medical profession, he was first attracted to the study of Chinese by the inspection of a Chinese work on botany, a science in which he was early interested. He prosecuted his study of Chinese with few extraneous aids; Silvestre de Sacy procured him, however, Chinese books from Berlin and St. Petersburg. In 1811 he published two treatises, one of them an "Essai sur la langue et littérature Chinoise;" the other "Sur l'étude des langues étrangères chez les Chinois," which attracted considerable attention. Having meanwhile practised medicine, and graduated as a physician, he was appointed in 1814, through the influence of Silvestre de Sacy, to the new chair of Chinese at the collège de France, and was commissioned to catalogue the Chinese books of the Bibliothèque Royale. He was afterwards made keeper of the oriental manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Royale, and elected president of the Societé Asiatique, which he had helped to found. Remusat was a courtier as well as a scholar, supporting with his pen the reactionary policy of Charles X., and his worldly success was not wholly due to his intellectual merits. He contrived to retain his position at the Bibliothèque after the revolution of the Three Days, which, however, he did not long survive, dying in June, 1832. If not a profound orientalist, he popularized some important branches of oriental study by the grace of his style. There is a list of his works in Quérard. They include the "Recherches sur les langues Tartares," 1820, condemned by later French critics as superficial; the "Elemens de la grammaire Chinoise;" and a very agreeable translation of a Chinese novel, "Ta-Kiao-li, or les deux cousines," one of the earliest introductions of the West to a knowledge of the fictitious literature of the Chinese. Many of his scattered essays on oriental topics are collected in the Mélanges Asiatiques, 1826-27; and in the Mélanges posthumes d'histoire, et de littérature orientales, 1843.—F. E.  * RENAN,, a very eminent French scholar and thinker, was born in 1823, and educated in Paris for the priesthood. His views altered as he prosecuted his studies, which were chiefly in the language and literature of the Semitic group of nations; and instead of entering the church, he devoted himself for a time to private teaching. One of his earliest published works was his treatise, "De philosophia peripatetica apud Syros," 1852. A prize essay of earlier composition he expanded into his well-known work, "Histoire genérale des langues Sémitiques," 1845, in which the abstrusest points of oriental philology were invested with interest and attraction. To 1853 belongs his "Averröes et l'Averröisme." His contributions to periodicals were collected in 1857, as "Etudes d'histoire religieuse," and in 1859 as "Essais de morale et de critique." In 1859 he also published, with a remarkable introduction, a translation of the Book of Job, and in 1860 one of the Song of Solomon. <section end="45Zcontin" />