Rembrandt | Page 3

the days when
the painter's popularity with the general public of Holland had waned,
there was never any lack of enthusiastic students from many countries,
all clamouring for admission to the studio.
Many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater
trial. Bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative genius;
success tends to destroy it. Rembrandt did not remain unaffected by the
quick response that Amsterdam made to his genius. His art remained
true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession to what
silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know what to do with
the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so freely. The
best use he made of changing circumstances was to become engaged to
Saskia van Uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend Hendrick van
Uylenborch, the art dealer of Amsterdam. Saskia, who was destined to
live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems to have
been born in 1612, and to have become engaged to Rembrandt when
she was twenty. The engagement followed very closely upon the
patronage of Rembrandt by Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder,

who instructed the artist to paint three pictures. There seemed no longer
any need to hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed
the marriage until 1634. Saskia is enshrined in many pictures. She is
seen first as a young girl, then as a woman. As a bride, in the picture
now at Dresden, she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big
glass with his outstretched arm. Her expression here is rather shy, as if
she deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued.
This picture gave offence to Rembrandt's critics, who declared that it
revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living--they
could see nothing more in canvas than a story. Several portraits of
Saskia remained to be painted. She would seem to have aged rapidly,
for after marriage her days were not long in the land. She was only
thirty when she died, and looked considerably older.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS'
GUILD
This fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day
in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. It is one of the finest examples of
the master's portrait groups, and was painted in 1661.]
In the first years of his married life Rembrandt moved to the Nieuwe
Doelstraat. For the time he had more commissions than he knew how to
execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked,
and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There
can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years;
he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for
any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would
be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great
was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by
Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid
pearls that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his
rash and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would
push the prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would
rush in where wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art
collection, the purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good
and open-handed living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's

estate. The artist's temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen
who could not understand it at all, his independence and insistence
upon the finality of his own judgment were more offensive still, and
after 1636 there were fewer applications for portraits.
In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van
Loo, who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still
more extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on
account of a case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not
seem to have troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the
gossips talking more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life
and art, he was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of
raising children seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to
losing the little Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had
died soon after birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture
remains on record with that of her husband, painted ten years before,
and even the biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt
was anything but a good son. A year later the well-beloved