Rembrandt | Page 8

go home through
the town, and it seemed to me as if I were meeting the very people I
had just seen in the engravings. As I went through the "Hoog Straat"
and "St. Anthony's Breestraat" to the "Joden Breestraat," where I lived
a few doors from the famous house where Rembrandt dwelt and
worked so long, I saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; I saw
the vivid Hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the
red-headed women; the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of
rubbish; the houses, the people, the sky. It was all Rembrandt--all
Rembrandtesque. A great deal has been changed in those streets since
the time of which I have been writing, yet, even now, whenever I pass
through them I seem to see the colours, and the kind of people
Rembrandt shows us in his works.
In the meantime I had found a third manifestation of Rembrandt's talent,
viz., his drawings. To a young painter, who himself was still groping in
the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were
exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus.
Less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before I could
properly appreciate them, but when I understood what I firmly believe
still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting
them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines I felt their
true meaning. They were simply the embodiments of his deeper
feelings; emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination.
They have been thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand;
the same hand that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest
impulse, the least sensation. When I looked at them superficially they
seemed disfigured by all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which
cross and recross in a seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but
when looked into carefully, they all have a meaning of their own, and

have been put there with a just and deep felt appreciation of light and
shade. The greater compositions crowded with figures, the buildings,
the landscapes--all are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
This famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our National Gallery.
It is on canvas 4 ft. 2+3/4 in. by 3 ft. 2 in.]
One evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and
showed us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them,
however, being by contemporaries who had already become famous.
Among them was one drawing by Rembrandt, and it was remarkable to
notice the peculiar effect it produced in this collection. The scene
represented on the old smudgy piece of paper was so simple in
execution, so noble in composition, done with just a few strokes of the
pencil, that all the other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it.
Here was the master, towering above all.
Thus I saw Rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and
could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or
etching needle. Whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a
corner of old Amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful
drawings. His pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naïve.
His nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter
dared paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt,
entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of
reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or
June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's
washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the
canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood.
And the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful
that one can never look too long at them. All his work is done with a
light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once
the idea of painful study and exertion.
II

What do I think of the master now, after so many years?
Come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression
of Rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "The Night Patrol."
Our way leads us now to the Ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the
newly built "Rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to
obtain a full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the
struggle it cost to erect this temple of art.
At first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade,
which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies.