Rembrandt Part 1

Rembrandt.

by Estelle M. Hurll.

PREFACE

The choice of pictures for this collection has been made with the object of familiarizing the student with works fairly representative of Rembrandt's art in portraiture and Biblical ill.u.s.tration, landscape and genre study, in painting and etching. Admirers of the Dutch master may miss some well-known pictures. For obvious reasons the Lecture in Anatomy is deemed unsuitable for this place, and the Hundred Guilder Print contains too many figures to be reproduced here clearly. The Syndics of the Cloth Guild and the print of Christ Preaching will compensate for these omissions, and show Rembrandt at his best, both with brush and burin.

There are perhaps no paintings in the world more difficult to reproduce satisfactorily in black and white than those of Rembrandt.

His marvelous effects of chiaroscuro leave in darkness portions of the composition, which appear in the photograph as unintelligible blurs.

With these difficulties to meet, great pains have been taken to select for the reproductions of this book the best photographs made direct from the original paintings. A comparative study of the available material has resulted in making use of an almost equal number from Messrs. Hanfstaengl & Co. and Messrs. Braun & Cie.

In reproducing the etchings the publishers have been most fortunate in being able to use for the purpose original prints in the Harvey D.

Parker Collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

ESTELLE M. HURLL.

NEW BEDFORD, Ma.s.s.

November, 1899.

INTRODUCTION

I. ON REMBRANDT'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST

A general impression prevails with the large picture-loving public that a special training is necessary to any proper appreciation of Rembrandt. He is the idol of the connoisseur because of his superb mastery of technique, his miracles of chiaroscuro, his blending of colors. Those who do not understand these matters must, it is supposed, stand quite without the pale of his admirers. Too many people, accepting this as a dictum, take no pains to make the acquaintance of the great Dutch master. It may be that they are repelled at the outset by Rembrandt's indifference to beauty. His pictures lack altogether those superficial qualities which to some are the first requisites of a picture. Weary of the familiar commonplaces of daily life, the popular imagination looks to art for happier scenes and fairer forms. This taste, so completely gratified by Raphael, is at first strangely disappointed by Rembrandt. While Raphael peoples his canvases with beautiful creatures of another realm, Rembrandt draws his material from the common world about us. In place of the fair women and charming children with whom Raphael delights us, he chooses his models from wrinkled old men and beggars. Rembrandt is nevertheless a poet and a visionary in his own way. "For physical beauty he subst.i.tutes moral expression," says Fromentin. If in the first glance at his picture we see only a transcript of common life, a second look discovers something in this common life that we have never before seen there. We look again, and we see behind the commonplace exterior the poetry of the inner life. A vision of the ideal hovers just beyond the real. Thus we gain refreshment, not by being lifted out of the world, but by a revelation of the beauty which is in the world. Rembrandt becomes to us henceforth an interpreter of the secrets of humanity. As Raphael has been surnamed "the divine,"

for the G.o.dlike beauty of his creations, so Rembrandt is "the human,"

for his sympathetic insight into the lives of his fellow men.

Even for those who are slow to catch the higher meaning of Rembrandt's work, there is still much to entertain and interest in his rare story-telling power--a gift which should in some measure compensate for his lack of superficial beauty. His story themes are almost exclusively Biblical, and his style is not less simple and direct than the narrative itself. Every detail counts for something in the development of the dramatic action. Probably no other artist has understood so well the pictorial qualities of patriarchal history.

That singular union of poetry and prose, of mysticism and practical common sense, so striking in the Hebrew character, appealed powerfully to Rembrandt's imagination. It was peculiarly well represented in the scenes of angelic visitation. Jacob wrestling with the Angel affords a fine contrast between the strenuous realities of life and the pure white ideal rising majestically beyond. The homely group of Tobit's family is glorified by the light of the radiant angel soaring into heaven from the midst of them.

Rembrandt's New Testament scenes are equally well adapted to emphasize the eternal immanence of the supernatural in the natural. The Presentation in the Temple is invested with solemn significance; the simple Supper at Emmaus is raised into a sacrament by the transfigured countenance of the Christ. For all these contrasts between the actual and the ideal, Rembrandt had a perfect vehicle of artistic expression in chiaroscuro. In the mastery of the art of light and shade he is supreme. His entire artistic career was devoted to this great problem, and we can trace his success through all the great pictures from the Presentation to the Syndics.

Rembrandt apparently cared very little for the nude, for the delicate curves of the body and the exquisite colors of flesh. Yet to overbalance this disregard of beautiful form was his strong predilection for finery. None ever loved better the play of light upon jewels and satin and armor, the rich effectiveness of Oriental stuffs and ecclesiastical vestments. Unable to gratify this taste in the portraits which he painted to order, he took every opportunity to paint both himself and his wife, Saskia, in costume. Wherever the subject admitted, he introduced what he could of rich detail. In the picture of Israel Blessing the Sons of Joseph, Asenath, as the wife of an Egyptian official, is appropriately adorned with jewels and finery.

In the Sortie of the Civic Guard, Captain Cocq is resplendent in his military regalia.

With all this fondness for pretty things, Rembrandt never allowed his fancy to carry him beyond the limits of fitness in sacred art. The Venetian masters had represented the most solemn scenes of the New Testament with a pomp and magnificence entirely at variance with their meaning. Rembrandt understood better the real significance of Christianity, and made no such mistake. His Supper at Emmaus is the simple evening meal of three peasant pilgrims precisely as it is represented in the Gospel. His Christ Preaching includes a motley company of humble folk, such as the great Teacher loved to gather about him.

It was perhaps the obverse side of his fondness for finery, that Rembrandt had a strong leaning towards the picturesqueness of rags. A very interesting cla.s.s of his etchings is devoted to genre studies and beggars.

Here his disregard of the beautiful in the pa.s.sion for expression reached an extreme. His subjects are often grotesque--sometimes repulsive--but always intensely human. Reading human character with rare sympathy, he was profoundly touched by the poetry and the pathos of these miserable lives.

Through all these studies runs a quaint vein of humor, relieving the pathos of the situations. The picturesque costume of the old Rat Killer tickles the sense of humor, and conveys somehow a delightful suggestion of his humb.u.g.g.e.ry which offsets the touching squalor of the grotesque little apprentice. And none but a humorist could have created the swaggering hostler's boy holding the Good Samaritan's horse.

As a revealer of character, Rembrandt reaches the climax of his power in his portraits. From this cla.s.s of his pictures alone one can repeople Holland with the spirits of the seventeenth century. All cla.s.ses and conditions and all ages came within the range of his magic brush and burin. The fresh girlhood of Saskia, the st.u.r.dy manhood of the Syndics, and the storied old age of his favorite old woman model show the scope of his power, and in Israel Blessing the Sons of Joseph he shows the whole range in a single composition. He is manifestly at his best when his sitter has p.r.o.nounced features and wrinkled skin, a face full of character, which he understood so well how to depict.

Obstacles stimulated him to his highest endeavor. Given the prosaic and hackneyed motif of the Syndics' composition, he rose to the highest point of artistic expression in a portrait group, in which a grand simplicity of technical style is united with a profound and intimate knowledge of human nature.

II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE

The history of modern Rembrandt bibliography properly begins with the famous work by C. Vosmaer, "Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, sa Vie et ses uvres." Vosmaer profited by the researches of Kolloff and Burger to bring out a book which opened a new era in the appreciation of the great Dutch master. It was first issued in 1868, and was republished in 1877 in an enlarged edition. This book was practically alone in the field until the recent work of Emile Michel appeared. In the English translation (by Florence Simmonds) edited by Walter Armstrong, Michel's "Rembrandt" is at the present moment our standard authority on the subject. It is in two large ill.u.s.trated volumes full of historical information and criticism and containing a complete cla.s.sified list of Rembrandt's works--paintings, drawings, and etchings.

The "Complete Work of Rembrandt," by Wilhelm Bode, is now issuing from the press (1899), and will consist of eight volumes containing reproductions of all the master's pictures, with historical and descriptive text. It is to be hoped that this mammoth and costly work will be put into many large reference libraries, where students may consult it to see Rembrandt's work in its entirety.

The series of small German monographs edited by H. Knackfuss and now translated into English has one number devoted to Rembrandt, containing nearly one hundred and sixty reproductions from his works, with descriptive text. Kugler's "Handbook of the German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools," revised by J. A. Crowe, includes a brief account of Rembrandt's life and work, which may be taken as valuable and trustworthy. For a critical estimate of the character of Rembrandt's art, its strength and weaknesses, and its peculiarities, nothing can be more interesting than what Eugene Fromentin, French painter and critic, has written in his "Old Masters of Belgium and Holland."

Rembrandt's etchings have been the exclusive subject of many books.

There are voluminous descriptive catalogues by Bartsch ("Le Peintre Graveur") Claussin, Wilson, Charles Blanc, Middleton, and Dutuit. A short monograph on "The Etchings of Rembrandt," by Philip Gilbert Hamerton (London, 1896), reviews the most famous prints in a very pleasant way.

There are valuable prints from the original plates of Rembrandt in the Harvey D. Parker collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in the Gray collection of the Fogg Museum at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts.

Those who are not fortunate enough to have access to original prints will derive much satisfaction from the complete set of reproductions published in St. Petersburg (1890) with catalogue by Rovinski, and from the excellent reproductions of Amand Durand, Paris.

To come in touch with the spirit of the times and of the country of Rembrandt, the reader is referred to Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic," condensed and continued by W. E. Griffis.

III. HISTORICAL DIRECTORY OF THE PICTURES OF THIS COLLECTION

_Portrait Frontispiece_. National Gallery, London. Signed and dated 1640.

1. _Jacob Wrestling with the Angel_. Berlin Gallery. Signed and dated 1659. Figures life size. Size: 4 ft. 5-1/16 in. by 3 ft. 9-5/8 in.

2. _Israel Blessing the Sons of Joseph_. Ca.s.sel Gallery. Signed and dated 1656. Figures life size. Size: 5 ft. 8-9/16 in. by 6 ft. 6-3/4 in.

3. _The Angel Raphael Leaving the Family of Tobit_. Louvre, Paris.

Signed and dated 1637. Size: 2 ft. 2-13/16 in. by 1 ft. 8-1/2 in.

4. _The Rat Killer_. Etching. Signed and dated 1632. Size: 5-1/2 in.

by 4-9/16 in.

5. _The Philosopher in Meditation_. Louvre, Paris. Signed and dated 1633. Size: 11-7/16 in. by 13 in.

6. _The Good Samaritan_. Etching. Signed and dated 1633. Size: 10-1/5 in. by 8-3/5 in.

7. _The Presentation in the Temple_. At the Hague. Signed and dated 1631. Size: 2 ft. 4-11/16 in. by 1 ft. 6-7/8 in.

8. _Christ Preaching_. Etching. Date a.s.signed by Michel, about 1652.

Size: 6-1/5 in. by 8-1/5 in.

9. _Christ at Emmaus_. Louvre, Paris. Signed and dated 1648. Size: 2 ft. 2-13/16 in. by 2 ft. 1-5/8 in.

10. _Portrait of Saskia_. Ca.s.sel Gallery. Painted about 1632-1634.

Life size. Size: 3 ft. 2-11/16 in. by 2 ft. 1-3/5 in.