Rembrandt

Rembrandt, by Josef Israels

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Title: Rembrandt
Author: Josef Israels
Release Date: February 16, 2007 [EBook #20607]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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REMBRANDT ***

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MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE
In the Same Series

Artist. Author. VELAZQUEZ. S. L. Bensusan. REYNOLDS. S. L.
Bensusan. TURNER. C. Lewis Hind. ROMNEY. C. Lewis Hind.
GREUZE. Alys Eyke Macklin. BOTTICELLI. Henry B. Binns.
ROSSETTI. Lucien Pissarro. BELLINI. George Hay. FRA
ANGELICO. James Mason. LEIGHTON. A. Lys Baldry.
REMBRANDT. Josef Israels. WATTS. W. Loftus Hare. TITIAN. S. L.
Bensusan. RAPHAEL. Paul G. Konody.
Others in Preparation.

[Illustration: PLATE 1.--SUZANNA VAN COLLEN
This portrait, painted about 1633, and one of the gems of the Wallace
Collection, presents Susanna van Collen, wife of Jan Pellicorne, and
her daughter.]

REMBRANDT
BY JOSEF ISRAELS
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK NEW YORK: FREDERICK A.
STOKES CO.
The plates are printed by Bemrose Dalziel, Ltd., Watford
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate I. Suzanna Van Collen Frontispiece From the Wallace Collection
Page II. A Portrait of Saskia 14 In the Brera, Milan

III. Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild 24 In the Royal Museum at
Amsterdam
IV. Portrait of an Old Man 34 In the Pitti Palace at Florence
V. The Company of Francis Banning Cocq 40 In the Royal Museum at
Amsterdam
VI. Portrait of a Young Man 50 In the Pitti Palace at Florence
VII. Portrait of an Old Lady 60 From the National Gallery, London
VIII. Head of a Young Man 70 In the Louvre

INTRODUCTION
While the world pays respectful tribute to Rembrandt the artist, it has
been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small
measure of reliable information concerning Rembrandt the man. The
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little
concerned with personalities. A man was judged by his work which
appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. There
were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an
artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life.
Sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip,
quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate
generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great
work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes
as Rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the
details of their sojourn unrecorded.
Rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to
have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no
capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated
in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much.
Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his
collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a

fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and
wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said
about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was
recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to
gather up such fragments of biography as they could find.
Shakespeare has put into Mark Antony's mouth the statement that "the
evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with
Rembrandt van Ryn. His first biographers seem to have no memory
save for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts.
They remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his
studio was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could
accommodate, that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling
house, and that in short, he had every chance that would have led a
good business man to prosperity and an old age removed from stress
and strain. These facts seem to have aroused their ire. They have
assailed his memory with invective that does not stop short at false
statement. They have found in the greatest of all Dutch artists a
ne'er-do-well who could not take advantage of his opportunities, who
had the extravagance of a company promoter, an explosive temper and
all the instincts that make for loose living.
[Illustration: