S3 
 38 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Professor 
 A, Henry Detweiler 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016805628 
 
REMBRANDT 
 
 Selected Studies 
 
 BY 
 
 H. KNACKFUSS. MALCOLM BELL. JOHN C. VAN DYKE. 
 JOHN W. MOLLETT. AND OTHERS. 
 
 ' t;^:- 
 
 l//'-/^?. . 
 
 THE LOUVRE AND LUXEMBOURG CO. 
 
 1319 Walnut St., Philadelphia. 
 
REMBRANDT'S MOTHER 
 
 fiujoSts 
 
 A/t> 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 Famous among the great Dutch masters of painting was Rem- 
 brandt van Ryn. His contemporaries in art were Murillo, of the 
 Spanish school, and Rubens and Van Dyck, of the Flemish school. 
 Italy had, long before this, produced Leonardi da Vinci, Michael 
 Angelo, Raphael, Titian and Correggio. Germany, France and Eng- 
 land had not yet entered upon the field of art with any really great 
 names. Rembrandt lived in an era of great historical i^ovements. 
 Richelieu was the great power in French politics, and Cromwell had 
 seriously disturbed the inonarchical machinery of England. Rem- 
 brandt was born in Eeyden, Holland, in 1607. His father, a miller, 
 was then forty years old, and in easy circumstances. His mother was 
 a vigorous, strong-charactered woman, whom the boy, in after years, 
 loved to portray. His early life presents the usual struggle with 
 diificulties and environments. He had not, like Van Dyck, the advan- 
 A ' tages of a Rubens for a teacher. In 1630, when . twenty-three years 
 
 Vi old, he' established himself in Amsterdam, as a professional artist. 
 
 Here he spent the remainder of his days. In 1634, he married Saskia 
 von Ulenburg, a very beautiful girl, to whom he was devotedly 
 attached. She was of an aristocratic family, an orphan, and had a 
 
SASKIA 
 
 large fortune in her own name. Saskia 
 is represented in so many portraits by 
 her husband, that her face is familiar to 
 all who know his works. Three pictures 
 of her, painted during the j-ear of their 
 betrothal, show her in all the loveliness 
 of youth — with dazzling complexion-, rosy 
 lips, great, expressive eyes and auburn 
 hair. Beatrice is inseparable from Dante; 
 Mona Lisa from Leonardo ; Yittoria 
 Colonna from IMichael Angelo ; and, with Saskia, begins the brightest _ 
 epoch of Rembrandt's life. She created for him the joys of domestic 
 life, and furnished subjects for many of his most famous art composi- 
 tions. Rembrandt was married when Saskia was eighteen, and his wife 
 died at the age of thirty. At her death, she left her wealth to her 
 husband. Misfortune overtook him in spite of his success ; and, 
 fifteen years later, in 1657, his household goods and his fine collection 
 of paintings were sold at auction, to satisfy his creditors. He died in 
 1669, when he was sixtj'-two years old, and was buried at Westerkirk. 
 
 ^* ^* (^* t^ ^6 i^C f^C I^C g^C 
 
 Rembrandt, himself a great beginning and a great ending, 
 passed in his life-journey many another great beginning and great 
 ending ; passed, ignorant of many, unheeding of most ; for so little 
 did public events — even those of his native land, the events generally 
 considered of importance — aifect him, that it is only desirable to men- 
 tion them for the purpose of realizing more distinctly his place in the 
 history of man, of pointing out certain well-known landmarks by 
 which to map his comet-career, and of getting him into historical per- 
 spective. In England, at the time that Rembrandt was born. Justice 
 had but latel}' made an end of trying, condemning, hanging, drawing 
 and quartering, with a little incidental torturing, the participators in 
 the Gunpowder Plot, and was engaged in resettling the bandage on 
 
PORTRAIT OF SASKIA 
 '633 
 
 kss-::t_. 
 
her eyes, whicli had, it is to be feared, slipped somewhat awry in the 
 hurry of the chase. He was two years old when Milton came into the 
 world, ten when Shakespeare departed from it, twelve when Raleigh's 
 restless spirit was hurried out of it. When Charles and Buckingham 
 
 were making their futile journey to the Spanish Court, he was 
 beginning his brief period of study in Lastman's studio ; and while 
 Buckingham was sailing in pomp to his fatal attempt to relieve the 
 Protestants beleaguered in Rochelle, he was painting his first picture. 
 
 REMBRANDT'S MOTHER. 1638 
 
He took his first pupil the year that Buckingham fell under Felton's 
 knife, and had painted " The Anatomy Lesson " and " The Ship- 
 builder and his Wife " when Milton first broke upon the world as a 
 poet with "L' Allegro" and "II Penseroso." In 1640, the year his 
 mother died, the Long Parliament met ; and the birth of Titus and 
 the death of Strafford on the scaffold both befell in the following year. 
 The birth of Newton, and the death of Saskia, took place during the 
 next, and the same year saw Charles' ill-fated standard first flaunt upon 
 the breeze at Nottingham. As the Civil 
 War raged up and down the country, and 
 Charles' affairs grew ever worse and worse, 
 so did Rembrandt's prosperity as surely if 
 less conspicuously, decline. The process 
 was more swift, however, in the former than 
 in the latter case ; for Charles had lain 
 seven years in his grave, and two years had 
 passed since Cromwell, his conqueror, had 
 been made Lord Protector, when Rembrandt 
 was finally, declared bankrupt. Meantime, 
 in the previous year in fact, we come upon a 
 link between these two contemporary giants, 
 the great ruler and the great painter ; for in 
 that year, 1655, Cromwell granted a pen- 
 sion to one Manasseh ben Israel, who had 
 
 successfully negotiated with him the permission for the Jews to 
 return to England after three hundred and seventy years of banish- 
 ment. Now, among the etchings by the painter is one of this same 
 Manassdi who was his fellow-citizen in Amsterdam, and in it we can 
 gaze upon the presentment, an excellent one, we may be sure, of the 
 man that Cromwell honored and Rembrandt knew. Great beginnings 
 and great endings in England. The ending of the glorious traditions 
 of Elizabeth's England on the scaffold of Raleigh, the ending of the 
 golden age of England's literature, when in turn Shakespeare, 
 
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Massinger passed away. 
 The beginning and the ending of the last would-be- 
 irresponsible monarchy ; the beginning and ending 
 of the resulting Commonwealth ; but the ending, 
 actual if not yet avowed, of the divine right of kings 
 to do unquestioned wrong, and the beginning of the 
 freedom that comes from true constitutional govern- 
 ment. Still greater beginnings, which have not yet 
 come even within sight of their endings, over-seas. 
 Rembrandt was two years old when Canada was first 
 effectually settled and the city of Quebec founded, 
 and, though the seizure of the young colony by 
 England in 1629 was followed only three years later 
 by its restoration to the French, the beginning of what is now England 
 in America was made during his lifetime. He was four when the ' 
 United States saw its first beginnings in the establishment of the 
 colony of Virginia; fourteen, and just commencing his art studies in 
 the studio of Van Swanenburch, when the unsuspected seeds of its 
 future development were planted with the first steps taken bj- the 
 Pilgrim Fathers on the shores of Massachusetts — seeds which had 
 already proved their assured vitality nine years later, when the first 
 Charter was granted ; while, in the meantime another strain, destined 
 to flourish apart awhile, then meet and mingle with the first, ai'ose 
 the year he finished finally with masters when New York was 
 founded. Beginnings and endings no less great in France. Henri 
 Quatre was still on the throne when Rembrandt was born, but was 
 not destined to enjoy much longer that Paris he held worth a mass, 
 for Rembrandt was but four -when the gay king was murdered by 
 Jacques Clement. He was eighteen when Richelieu rose 
 to the power he used so ruthlessly yet so successfully for 
 ^ France ; six-and-thirty when the reins of government 
 dropped from his dying hands into those of the Italian 
 Mazarin, less commanding if no less cunning ; fifty-six 
 when Mazarin followed his great predecessor to the tomb. 
 
Amsterdam was at this time a rich and flovirishiug commercial 
 city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, intersected by the River 
 Amstel, and by numerous canals. The lofty houses of the citizens 
 formed the streets ; the mansions of the nobility lined the quays. 
 The tapering roofs and towers of churches and public buildings rose 
 in the midst. The architecture of Amsterdam contained, even then, 
 a few traces of the florid Gothic style in the churches and ancient 
 convents, and in the peaked gables, the ornamental arches, and pro- 
 files of the houses ; but Hendrik de Keyser, the town architect, had 
 
 created a new national style which, though based on the Italian 
 Renaissance, was original in its character. This architecture, with 
 pilasters and classical plain-moulding at every story, was picturesqtie 
 in its ornamental gables, its grotesque heads, its carved stone gar- 
 lands, and its bonds of red brick and free-stone. Each house had a 
 family character or emblem of its own.. The facades, escutcheons, 
 medallions and sign-boards were decorated with allegorical subjects in 
 bas-relief, figures and scenes borrowed from the Bible, family mottoes, 
 proverbs, rhymes, or play upon names. Perpetual bustle and crowd 
 pervaded the streets, canals and rivers. The Y and the Amstel were 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
crowded with vessels. The city was trading with the whole world, 
 and was the exchange of all nations, and the focus of civilization. 
 Artists came there in great numbers with the double object of studying 
 the peculiar picturesqueness of the city, and iinding among its wealthy 
 merchants a market for their works ; and among them Rembrandt 
 established his studio. He was not a stranger in the place where, six 
 or seven years ago, , he had passed his short apprenticeship with Last- 
 man. And, even after his return to Leyden, he had not been for- 
 gotten in Amsterdam, for from that city he had received numerous 
 commissions. 
 
 The birth of Dutch art and of Dutch freedom were contempora- 
 neous. Holland emerged from the long and cruel thraldom of the 
 oppressor to freedom of action and freedom of thought. It cast off the 
 religion of its task-masters, and the same religious revolution which 
 created a political Holland created also Dutch art. The religion of 
 the pictures of this school, when there is any, is that of a bald 
 
 THE SHIPBUILDER AND HIS WIFE 
 
Protestantism whicli makes their sacred scenes as unlovely as the relig- 
 ious services where Protestantism has sway. The Bible is interpreted 
 in Dutch art not by the Church, but by the people, and the simplicity 
 of Scripture is exaggerated to triviality. In their choice of subject the 
 Dutch masters stand out in sharp contrast to the painters of Italy. 
 The Italians take us into the seventh Heaven, and show us lovely 
 visions of saints and angels, flooded with a golden radiance from on 
 high; the Dutchmen teach us to find an idyl in a broomstick, or a 
 paradise in a tavern parlour. To their eyes a girl peeling onions is a 
 worthier subject than a gloried Madonna ; and if they paint sacred 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 

 pictures, the Dutch Burgomaster and the homel}^ Vronw peep out 
 from the thin disguise of a Holy Family. The Dutch school is the 
 exponent of every-day life ; it has no aspirations after the great and 
 glorious, the mysterious or the unseen. Nature, as seen in Holland, 
 either out of doors or in the house, is the one inspiration of its art. 
 We have come to the domain of naturalism, and have left spiritualism 
 in Italy; just as we have exchanged the blue skies of 'the South for 
 the leaden, cloudy a:tmosphere of the North. We must not suppose, 
 however, that the Dutch school in its realistic character presents 
 nothing but a brutal materialism, and never rises above the delinea- 
 tion of drunken boors at a village inn. There is a truthfulness in the 
 Dutch pictures which commands admiration ; a dead tree by Riiisdael 
 may touch a heart, a bull by Paulus Potter may speak eloquently, a 
 kitchen by Kalf may contain a poem. All the painters of this school 
 confined themselves to loving, understanding and representing nature, 
 every one adding his own feelings and tastes — in fact, adding himself. 
 This loye of natiire is specially shown in those landscapes " and sea- 
 pieces in which the Dutch 
 school excels. If we visit 
 various parts of Holland in 
 different kinds of weather, we 
 shall see how each painter 
 identifies himself with, the spe- 
 cial aspect which he depicts. 
 A barren, gloomj^ landscape 
 under a leaden sky, unre- 
 lieved by living creature, its 
 grim monotony only broken 
 by a waterfall or a dead tree, 
 at once shows us Jacob van 
 Ruisdael, " the melancholy 
 Jacques " of landscape paint- 
 ers who finds " tongues in 
 
 

 PORTRAIT OF SASKIA 
 
trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in 
 stones." A bright early morning, -when the sun 
 flashes merril}- on white sail and glancing streams, 
 ' and the fat cattle are browsing knee-deep in the 
 rich meadows, reminds us of the lover of light, 
 Aelbert Cuyp. A warm afternoon, when the 
 shadows of the fruit-trees lie across the orchard, 
 and an ox, or horse, or some other animal, lies in 
 the graceful shade, tells us of Paulus Potter, the 
 Raphael of animal painters, the La Fontaine of 
 artists. The every-day life of Holland is identified in its various 
 phases with different painters of this school. Owing to the changes 
 which time and fashion make, we shall not find in the streets of Ant- 
 werp the " Night Watch " of Rembrandt, or the " Banquet " of Van 
 der Heist in the town-hall ; the long satin robes of Ter Borch ; the 
 plumed cavaliers of Wouwerman ; or the drunken peasants of Adriaan 
 van Ostade. But if in passing through a Dutch town, we see a young 
 girl leaning over the old balustrades of a window surrounded with 
 ivy and geraniums, we maj^ still recognize Gerard Dou. In the peace- 
 ful interior of a Gothic house, where an old woman is spinning, and 
 which is lighted up by the warm rays of the sun, we see Pieter 
 de Hooch. The canal bordered with trees, in 
 a clean town, ever wearing a holiday appear- 
 ance, where every stone in the streets may be 
 counted, as well as everj' tile on the roof and 
 e^•ery brick in the walls, reminds us of \^an 
 der Heyde ; and the vegetable garden at 
 Amsterdam still testifies to the fidelity of 
 Metsu. We have seen, then, that the origin of 
 the Dutch school is to be traced to that epoch 
 Avhen Holland successfully' waged the war of 
 Independence, and threw off the j-oke of Spain. 
 We have seen that the religion of the school 
 
 w 
 
H 
 
 I 
 
 n 
 X 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 O 
 X 
 
 WMM^I 
 
is that of a marked Protestantism, and that in its choice of subjects^ 
 Nature stands first, especially the homelier side of nature in every- 
 day life. We may notice, too, that nearly every master of this school 
 stands by himself, delineating nature in. his own special way. One 
 word must be said on the colouring of the Dutch, masters. We 
 frequently find a brilliance of colour in their pictures which we should 
 scarcely expect under the gloomy skies of Holland. The secret is to 
 be found in the double existence of Holland, European and Oriental. 
 Cold and grey as its own skies may be, it possessed bright lands 
 amongst colonies in the tropics ; and many a Dutch master, as he saw 
 the ships come home laden with the treasures of the East, dreamed of 
 the sun of Java, whilst he saw only the grey shadows of Holland. We 
 have said that the Dutch school contained all its greatest masters within 
 the space of less than a century. That school sprung into vigorous life, 
 full grown, as it were, at once, without preparation, and died as quickly. 
 Painters of things seen in the life, rather than in the imagina- 
 tion, it follows that the education 
 
 of the Dutch masters must have 
 made them keen students of fact. 
 The model was directly before 
 them, and they could not get 
 awaj' from the actual pictorial 
 appearance. So, by force of habit 
 and training, they became observ- 
 ers, rather than poetic thinkers 
 —men of trained eyes, quick to 
 see every line, light and color ; 
 men of trained hands, who could 
 record exactly what they saw 
 with certainty ; but not men of 
 great romantic or imaginative 
 disposition. They have been 
 put down in art history as 
 
" realists," though the word is misleading. No painter can do more than 
 " realize " his impression of the facts before him ; and the Dutch simply- 
 possessed a very clear-cut knowledge of the facts. The impression was 
 just as vivid when they turned from painting their men to painting 
 their streets, taverns, domestic scenes, landscapes and cattle. In real- 
 ity, they were painting the portrait again — the portrait of Holland ; 
 and they did it with the same shrewd observation, exact skill and 
 artistic taste. It was all a home art — as local almost as that of Japan ; 
 reflecting the time, the place and the people ; speaking for Holland 
 and the Dutch ; but not, as a rule, carrying far beyond that. There 
 
 REMBRANDT (Etching) 
 
 19 
 
ff" 
 
 was only one world-embracing painter among them all ; and that one 
 was Rembrandt. The reason for excepting him from the rule is obvi- 
 ous enough. Rembrandt was not onh- an eye and a hand, but a mind 
 and a spirit. It was his intense sympathy, his laroad humanity, that 
 made him universal and carried his art beyond the dikes and dunes. 
 
 To-day his works appeal to all manner of men, because they play 
 upon those passions and emotions common to the whole human race. 
 It made little difference that he painted the wretched outcast and the 
 squalid Jew, in a small town, in a small countr}-. The human heart 
 is substantiall}^ the same in all countries ; and, out of the Nazareth 
 
 20 
 
of Amsterdam, came Rembrandt's gospel of 
 ■pity and passion, to find believers in every 
 land and among every people. His humanity 
 places him in a class with Titian and Shakes- 
 
 peare. 
 
 It is worth while to repeat the state- 
 ment that Rembrandt was a mind as well as 
 an e3'e. Few painters had a keener grasp 
 on actualities ; few saw the world without so 
 positively and so clearly. Yet the artist's 
 view is always tinctured by an individuality ; 
 and everything in nature, to Rembrandt, was 
 "seen through the prism of an emotion.": 
 The mental make-up of the man is seen in 
 all his works ; and, as he lived through the 
 years of Iris life, we can see the deepening 
 and broadening of his character in his pict- 
 ures. At first .he had something of gay 
 youth about him. He had surrounded him- 
 self with studio costumes, oriental dresses, 
 turbans, armor, chains, jewelry ; and he used • 
 to dress in these and paint himself from a 
 mirror, Many of these youthful portraits in 
 silk or armor, %vith a defiant smile and a 
 swaggering air, are to-day. in Buropean gal- 
 leries. ■ At- the same tinie he was painting 
 other portraits of the hale" Gilder" type; 
 painting nude Buropas and Proserpines, holy 
 families and other Biblical subjects. Saskia 
 was his wife ; and he was dressing her in 
 bright costumes and painting pictures from 
 her. At Cassel she is gorgeous in robe and 
 
PORTRAIT OF A MAN 
 
 
hat, very quiet, dignified, quite noble ; at Dres- 
 den she is seated, smiling, upon Rembrandt's 
 knee, while he is holding up a glass of beer 
 and laughing boisterously. This was his time 
 of success, and his laughter was not out of 
 place ; but already he was in sympathy with 
 the sterner and sadder side of life. He had 
 heard the cry of the people from the street and 
 the quarter, and he was socially interested in 
 the forlorn and the miserable. 
 
 The works of Rembrandt are so numerous and so important 
 that we cannot speak justly of them in our present space. His pict- 
 ures number about six hundred, and his engravings four hundred ; 
 and these include not only many subjects, but many variations of 
 these subjects. The chief picture of his earliest style is the " Ana- 
 tomical Lecture," now in the Gallery of the Hague. This is remark- 
 able for the splendid heads of the Professor and his pupils, and for 
 the foreshortening of the body of the dead man which is the subject 
 of the lecture. In 1642 Rembrandt painted his largest picture, which 
 is also considered as his chief work. It is called the " Night Watch," 
 and is in the Amsterdam Museum. It represents a company of 
 guardsmen and others issuing from a public building into a space 
 Avhere there are many officers, soldiers, musicians, young girls, and 
 other figures, the great standard of the city being in the foreground. 
 One feels that the portraits of all the principal persons must be good. 
 The color is splendid, and the blending of lights and shades is mar- 
 velous in its beauty. \ He painted other pictures, in which there were 
 numbers of portraits of burghers, or men who were connected with 
 important institutions and undertakings. Rembrandt painted but 
 few pictures from profane history, and his landscapes are rare, but the 
 few that exist are worthy of so great a master, of one who so loved 
 everything that God has spread out before us in Nature. His scenes 
 
 REMBRANDT'S MOTHER 
 
from common life are beyond criticism ; but sometimes his picturing of 
 repulsive things makes us turn away, though we must admire the 
 power with which they are painted. His portraits were of the high- 
 est order, and very numerous; no other artist ever made so many 
 portraits of himself, and in them he is seen from the days of youthful 
 hope to ripened age. 
 
 Whenever Rembrandt was a little uncertain of his method he 
 seems to have sat himself down and settled the matter by the experi- 
 ment of painting a fresh portrait of himself, a sitter who was always 
 at hand and in an amiable mood whenever the master desired such a 
 seance. These series of portraits, scattered over different periods, 
 
 IAN LUTMA 
 
 2S 
 
form a most interesting statement of liis history, his prosperity or his 
 reverses, which are pretty plainly inscribed therein ; while no doubt 
 they served a useful purpose to Rembrandt in his craft and stock, and 
 afforded posterity an example of industry and good sense, which it were 
 well for conventional folk not too far to interfere with by assuming 
 ever that any painter who dares to record more than one portrait of 
 him or herself must be an individual of extraordinary vanity. 
 
 Rembrandt excelled alike in every style, and treated, with 
 equal felicity, the noblest subjectST— such as "Christ healing the 
 Sick " — and the most homely scenes, such as a cook tossing her cakes 
 in a pan. His works ai;e..principally remarkable for their picturesque 
 effect and truth 'to nature. He combined the greatest freedom and 
 grace of executioxi-with thoirougli -knowledge of all the technical pro- 
 cesses alike of painting, engraving and etching. The effects of light 
 and shade in his etchings have never been surpassed ; and he has 
 justly been called the Dutch Correggio. His landscapes and sea pieces 
 a,re vividly faithful representations of the inhospitable North, with its 
 
 dull level stretch of ocean and 
 dreary shores ; whilst his inte- 
 riors give life-like glimpses of 
 the domestic life of the home- 
 loving Dutch people. The want 
 of • feeling for refined physical 
 beauty with which he, in com- 
 mon with all his countrymen, 
 has been charged, is perhaps to 
 some extent to be accounted for 
 by his intense sympathy with 
 jjj^ the people with whom he was 
 ^^■JW^ brought m contact — a sympathy 
 *""^ '^^i: which enabled him to catch and 
 '^ " ■ ■ fix a likeness on canvas or on 
 
 26 
 
S'S3immBl 
 
 REMBRANDT'S FATHER 
 
 I 
 
copper with an extraordinary insight into character. That he was 
 not, however, without the power of appreciating spiritual elevation of 
 sentiment is proved by the pathos of some of the heads in his 
 " Descent from the Cross," in the Pinakothek, Munich, and in a 
 similar subject in the National Gallery. 
 
 A word must be said about the world-famed " Nigbt Watch," 
 one of the masterpieces of all time, and Rembrandt's greatest Achieve- 
 ment. It is pretty evident that the accomplished master put , all he 
 knew into this canvas, by way of composition in line and mass, whilst 
 he shows a determination to secure the most powerful dramatic effect 
 that could be attained through his consummate disposal of chiarjoscuro, 
 
 which assists his introduction of contrasted 
 typCj age and character. The first impression 
 that this work makes on the spectator is to 
 astound and almost st;ipify him by its very 
 power and intensity, but, after standing before 
 it for a quarter of an hour or so, it begins to 
 reveal itself as at all events a human possibility 
 of a great painter's creative genius. One can 
 ^ at length begin to observe that though the 
 whole impression rendered is, from its ^rip of 
 the various truths recorded, one of irresistible 
 conviction, j^et that every square foot of the 
 enormous canvas has been most carefully reasoned out in the 
 matter of logical and subtle composition. The construction has been 
 built out from the three front central figures, though all is focused 
 towards the one true centre — the bold and defiant cavalier with his 
 outstretched hand and glove. Every passage is made secondary to 
 this main motive, and every line and varying degree of contrast in 
 the matter of light and shade is steadih- leading up to this climax. 
 Observe the ingenious system of perspective and depth which is 
 
 28 
 
imparted to the composition by tlie varied disposition of spears and 
 guns, and how the motive of line is repeated in the extreme left 
 corner by the action of the dwarf which echoes an intention in the 
 gloom of shadow without a commonplace repetition, whilst the drum 
 of the man on the extreme right has obviously been invented in the 
 necessity of mere composition, and to secure a precious morsel of 
 repose which should contain the required disposition of contour. The 
 dazzling child in full' light is essential to secure the general focus of 
 the canvas, but adds by force of contrast amid such a company, to the 
 
 dramatic intensity of the scene, whilst the 
 man in the high black hat, behind the central 
 group, imparts a grim humour, which relieves 
 the tension of the threatening and awe-inspir- 
 ing mood of the canvas. Without having 
 visited Dresden, the only other works of the 
 same size or importance that summon them- 
 selves to the niemory to compare in the matter 
 of logically reasoned and effective composi- 
 tion, are Leonardo de Vinci's "Last Supper," 
 at Milan, and the "Marriage of Cana," by 
 Tintoretto, at \^enice. 
 When did the young Rembrandt begin to etch ? Who first taught 
 him to thump out the beeswax into a'sufficiently thin and even coat- 
 ing upon the warm copper plate ; to blacken it in the dense smoke of 
 the torch, and then to guide the needle as each touch brought out the 
 clear-cut line of warm gold upon the dark ground, impressing on him 
 that, in the result he aimed at, that which was then brightest would 
 be darkest, that which was then blackest would be white ? When did 
 he first hang over the bath of acid, turning slowly emerald green as it 
 sucked up the copper, while he brushed away with a feather the sil- 
 very bubbles as they budded along the lines his needle had dtawn, 
 checking the biting and endangering the ground? When did he. 
 
 30 
 
once for all, feel the rapture that comes from the first proof of one's 
 first etching — a rapture such as never again occurs in its entirety ; 
 since, bad as it may appear to the eye of broader experience, for the 
 maker of it there floats over it, as it lies yet warm and damp from the 
 press, a glamour such as no finished masterpiece shall ever again give 
 rise to in the future ? We can picture the scene ; but we can give 
 
 THE THREE ORIENTALS 
 
 neither date nor place on and in which it took pla:ce. That it was 
 somewhere in Leyden we may safely assume ; that it must have been 
 later than 1620 we may feel fairly sure ; that it was not later than 
 1628 we know ; for we have one notable etching, if not two, signed by 
 him in that year — the first we know of, though it is difficult to believe 
 that they were the first fruits of his practice in the art. There is an 
 ease and certainty in the touch, a delicacy and finish in the execution. 
 
an appreciation already of the possibilities and limitations of the 
 process, which, marvelous as he was in all things artistic, seem hardly 
 credible in a first eflFort, even of his. Yet the little evidence that we 
 possess appears to indicate that it was his first. As far as possibilities 
 go, there is no reason why Rembrandt should not have taken up etch- 
 ing as soon as he had attained sufficient mastery of drawing to express 
 himself at all. The art of engraving, now almost extinct, was at that 
 time in great demand for the production of portraits, the illustration 
 of books and the reproduction of popular pictures ; and there was 
 quite a prosperous little group of professors of it in Leyden. 
 
 32 
 
n