On another day he studied the drawings and landscape etchings--that dark,
spacious design called _The Three Trees_, and a perfect little drawing of
_Joseph Consoling the Prisoners_. The large plates inspired him with
reverence and profound admiration for Rembrandt's genius as an etcher, but
it was the smaller etchings that won his love and held it. He promised
himself, when he came into certain family monies of which there was some
prospect, that instead of buying an automobile, he would make himself the
proud owner of _The Three Trees_, _The Prodigal Son_, _Abraham's
Sacrifice_, and _Tobit Blind_--perhaps one, perhaps two, perhaps three,
perhaps all four.
CHAPTER IV
EPOCHS IN REMBRANDT'S LIFE
Suppose the admiration of our enthusiast for Rembrandt had been noted in
the select suburb where he lived: suppose his mother was one of those
estimable ladies who hold monthly Dorcas meetings in their drawing-rooms:
suppose that while the ladies were working at useful garments for the poor,
she persuaded her son to discourse on Rembrandt: suppose, because the
petition came from his mother that he, very much against his will,
consented.
It was not an easy task, as he took little or no interest in the life of
Rembrandt; his interests were entirely with the æsthetic appeal of his
work. What, he asked himself, can one say about the life of a man when that
life was wholly one with his art--mingling with it, ministering to it at
every point. A boy, the fifth child of a miller living at Leyden, is born
into the world, takes to art as a duck to water, becomes one of the
greatest painters of the world, dies in obscurity, is forgotten, and long
after his death is placed among his peers. What is there to say about such
a life? He made the attempt.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY IN A VELVET HOOD, HER HANDS FOLDED
1650. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
At the age of fourteen Rembrandt entered at Leyden University, but showed
little inclination for books. He preferred Lucas van Leyden to Virgil, and
his parents, accepting the situation, allowed him to study painting under
Swanenburch, and later in the studio of Lastman at Amsterdam. After a few
months with Lastman he returned to Leyden, "to practise painting alone and
in his own way." So much for his schooling. At the age of twenty-one he
produced a picture called _St. Paul in Prison_, and Gerard Dou became his
pupil. In 1631 he left Leyden and settled in Amsterdam. In 1634 he married
Saskia van Uylenborch, who bore him three children, and Titus was the
youngest. Some years later he had two daughters by his servant, Hendrickje
Stoffels. Perhaps he married her. She was a kind, good soul, faithful and
loyal to her master. His friends do not seem to have disapproved of this
irregular union, but the Consistory of her church summoned Hendrickje
before them and forbade her to communicate. At the age of fifty Rembrandt
was declared bankrupt. From that date until his death troubles encompassed
him; but he was happy so long as he could paint undisturbed. His son Titus
died when he was sixty-two, and the following year Rembrandt died, and
was buried at a cost of thirteen florins.
Our enthusiast did not find it easy to manipulate these facts, and he
elected to slur over the Hendrickje episode; but he was able to interest
the ladies of the Dorcas meeting by showing them some of Rembrandt's
pictures. He collected a series of photographs of the portraits and
paintings, including his favourite pictures, such as _The Jewish Rabbi_ in
the National Gallery, _Titus_ and _The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant_
in the Wallace collection, _Rembrandt's Mother_ and _The Singing Boy_ at
Vienna; and he invested sixpence in a little manual recently published,
called _The Masterpieces of Rembrandt_, containing sixty excellent
reproductions of his portraits and pictures.
He also displayed photographs of the remarkable series in the Hermitage
Gallery at St. Petersburg: _The Descent from the Cross_, with the brilliant
light focussed on the body and winding sheet, and fading away into the
darkness of the background; that radiant portrait of Saskia painted just
before her marriage to Rembrandt, known as _Flora with a Flower-trimmed
Crook_, standing at the opening of a grotto, with a wreath of flowers upon
her head, and the light falling upon her face and gay attire; _The Holy
Family_, the father working at his daily task in the background, and the
Virgin, who has laid down her book, drawing aside the curtain from the cot
to gaze upon the Child. He explained that Rembrandt, in placing this scene
in a humble Dutch cottage, knew that he could express the Biblical story
better that way than if he had painted an imaginary scene after the manner
of the Italians.
"This great Dutch master" (he quoted from Mr. Colvin) "succeeded in making
as wonderful pictures out of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom as the
Italians out of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day."
[Illustration: FLORA WITH A FLOWER-TRIMMED CROOK
1634. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
At this point of his discourse he began to feel more confidence, and he
proceeded to focus his remarks upon four periods in Rembrandt's
life--epochs that lend themselves to separate treatment, each epoch marked
by the production of a masterpiece, and one remarkable portrait that has a
particular and pathetic interest. Those four pictures are _The Anatomy
Lesson_, painted in 1632, when he was twenty-six; the _Sortie of a Company
of Amsterdam Musketeers_, known as _The Night Watch_, painted in 1642, when
he was thirty-six; _The Syndics of the Cloth Hall_, painted in 1662, when
he was fifty-six; and his own portrait, painted in 1667, two years before
his death. "His _Anatomy Lesson_," says M. Michel, "was the glorification
of Science itself; in his _Sortie of a Company of Amsterdam Musketeers_ he
embodied that civic heroism which had lately compassed Dutch independence;
and in a group of five cloth merchants seated round a table, discussing
the affairs of their guild, he summed up, as it were, in a few immortal
types, the noble sincerity of Dutch portraiture."
_The Anatomy Lesson_ was the picture that gave Rembrandt his opportunity,
and proclaimed his preeminence among the painters in Amsterdam. It was the
custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of
various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning
portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity. The
desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was
that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,--that one
burgher should not be treated with more importance than another. This
desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended to medical
circles. Portraits and portrait groups of famous physicians and surgeons
were painted and hung in the theatres where they lectured or operated. Dr.
Tulp, an eminent surgeon of the day, commissioned Rembrandt to represent
him performing an operation, proposing to present the picture to the
Surgeons' Guild in memory of his professorship. The grave, realistic
picture called _The Anatomy Lesson_, now hanging at the Hague Museum, was
the result. The corpse lies upon the dissecting table; before it stands Dr.
Tulp, wearing a broad-brimmed hat; around him are grouped seven elderly
students. Some are absorbed by the operation, others gaze thoughtfully at
the professor, or at the spectator. Dr. Tulp indicates with his forceps one
of the tendons of the subject's left arm, and appears to be addressing the
students, or practitioners, for these seven bearded men have long passed
the age of studentship. This picture made Rembrandt's reputation. He was
but twenty-six; the world seemed to be at his feet; in the two following
years he painted forty portraits.
It was not easy for our enthusiast to explain to the ladies of the Dorcas
meeting that the dissection of a body was a suitable subject for the brush
of a painter. The Dutchmen of Rembrandt's day were not so squeamish as we
have become since. They had a passion for the literal painting of literal
things, and this picture was destined not for a Tate Gallery, but for the
wall of an operating theatre. Dr. Tulp desired a picture of himself
performing an operation, and Rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way
that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever
since.
Ten years later Rembrandt painted another Doelen or Regent picture which,
under the erroneous title of _The Night Watch_, is to-day the chief
attraction of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. This time it was not a group of
surgeons, but a company of Amsterdam musketeers marching out under the
leadership of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq. In all these civic or
military Regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist's
fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money's worth in
the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form. It is an old
quarrel between artist and public. Mr. Abbey had to face it in his
Coronation picture; Mr. Bacon had to face it in his _Return of the
C.I.V.'s_; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the
complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last
century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator. Much
water had flowed under Burgomaster Six's bridge since Rembrandt painted
_The Anatomy Lesson_. Then he was the obedient student. Now he was an
acknowledged master. He painted _The Sortie of the Company of Frans Banning
Cocq_ as an artist who was profoundly interested in problems of light and
shade, with strong views as to the composition of a picture, not as a
methodical and mediocre painter desirous of carrying out the commission in
a way to please his patrons. They wanted a presentment of the face and
figure of each member of the company who had subscribed a hundred florins.
Rembrandt gave them a work of art. No doubt the captain and his lieutenant
were well enough pleased, for they stride forth in the forefront of the
picture, but the rank and file were bitterly hostile. From the painting of
_The Night Watch_ his popularity began to wane.
The history of this picture, after it had been hung in the Doelen or
assembly hall belonging to Captain Cocq's company, was as troublous as the
later life of Rembrandt. Years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and
ill-usage, it was removed from the Doelen to the Hotel de Ville, the
authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to
occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. This is proved by a
copy of the picture made by Lundens before the mutilation, now in the
National Gallery. When M. Hopman undertook the restoration of _The Night
Watch_ he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the
sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something
that Rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight. But
the popular name of the picture is still _The Night Watch_.
The ladies of the Dorcas Society expressed in eyes and gestures their
disapproval of the Amsterdam vandals who mutilated _The Night Watch_. One
of them remarked: "It happened a long time ago. So gross a barbarity could
not be perpetrated now."
Twenty years later, at the age of fifty-six, Rembrandt, having known what
it was to be homeless and penniless, painted his masterpiece, _The Syndics
of the Cloth Hall_, merely five figures grouped round a table, with a
servant, uncovered, in attendance. It is an extraordinarily real picture,
the final statement of Rembrandt's knowledge of painting, combined with
that rare power of seeing things just as they are--the hundred subtleties
that the untrained eye never sees, as well as the accents that all see. It
is the perfect painter's vision--a scene grasped as a whole, character
searched out but not insistent, the most delicate suggestion of equally
diffused light knitting the figures together. He made no attempt to be
picturesque as in _The Night Watch_; he was content just to paint five men
dressed in black, with flat white collars and broad-brimmed hats, and a
servant. With these simple materials Rembrandt produced the picture that
the world has agreed to regard as his masterpiece. Contemporary criticism
says nothing about it. The place of honour at the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam
is given to _The Night Watch_, but it is _The Syndics of the Cloth Hall_--a
simple presentation of five grave men seated at a table--that we remember
with wonder and admiration.
Our enthusiast, having dwelt upon these three masterpieces, marking epochs
in Rembrandt's life, referred again to the magnificent array of portraits
scattered in such regal profusion through the thirty years that passed
between the painting of _The Anatomy Lesson_ and _The Syndics_. Then
noticing, while enlarging upon the etchings, that his mother was casting
anxious glances at the clock, he hurriedly referred to the last portrait
that Rembrandt painted of himself, two years before his death. He could not
describe this portrait, which is in a private collection in Berlin, as he
had never seen it, so he quoted M. Michel's description: "This
extraordinary work, perhaps the last Rembrandt painted, is modelled with
prodigious vigour and freedom. With superb audacity, the master shows us
once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their
will. They are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. But the free
spirit is still unbroken. The eyes that meet ours are still keen and
piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the
toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. What was the secret of this
gaiety? In spite of his poverty, he had still a corner in which to paint.
Beside him stand an easel and an antique bust, perhaps a relic of his
former wealth. He holds his maul-stick in his hand, and pauses for a moment
in his work. He is happy because he can give himself up to his art."
[Illustration: THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS
1634. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
It was the last of half a hundred portraits of himself, painted and etched
without vanity; painted because a man's self is such an accommodating
model, always ready and willing; painted because Rembrandt loved to
experiment with himself before a mirror, grimacing, angry, stern, "as an
officer," "with a casque," "with a gorget," or, as we see him in the
National Gallery, on one wall with the bloom of youth and health upon his
face, on the other, dulled, stained, and marked by the finger of time. This
we can say: that he was always true to himself.
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT TRIUMVIRATE
It is generally acknowledged that the greatest masters of painting that the
world has known are Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt, and to each of the
triumvirate we apply the word genius. Among the many definitions of that
abused word is one which states that genius consists not in seeing more
than other people, but in seeing differently. We acknowledge genius in a
painter when, over and above masterly technical power, he presents to us a
view of life or of nature which we may never have seen, but which we are
convinced is the vision of deeper eyes than our own, and is true. The seer
has seen it, and it is only because of the dimness or narrowness or
worldliness of our outlook that we do not perceive it also.
A great painter writes us a letter, tells us of the things he has seen or
heard or felt, gives us news of the world wherein he lives. He expresses
his personality to us, and personality in art is a thing incalculable.
Corot's _Arcadia_ landscape delights us because it is the distilled essence
of the vision, heart, and character of the personality called Corot.
Personality may be expressed by a Rembrandt, abundantly. It may also be
expressed by a Velasquez, negatively.
We must be vigilant, in judging a painter, to distinguish between his own
personality and the personality of those who interpret him to us. The more
we give of ourselves to a painter or an author, the greater is the return
of his appeal and interest. Cleave the wood of your brain and you find him
brimming with communications, raise the stone of your imagination and he is
revealed.
A certain critic, who had devoted his life to the study of Reynolds, while
lecturing upon the achievement of that master, threw upon the screen a
certain large subject-picture, not one of Reynold's happiest efforts, but a
laboured and unattractive design which, we know, gave Reynolds an infinity
of trouble.
So scientific, so interesting was this critic's analysis of the picture, so
absorbing the attributes he read into it, that many of his audience were
persuaded that they were looking upon a Reynolds masterpiece, whereas they
were but hypnotised by the subtleties of the critic's mind working upon
Reynolds.
Conversely the criticism of some writers tends towards depreciation because
of their predilection for objective as opposed to subjective criticism. The
late P.G. Hamerton, writing upon Rembrandt, says, "The chiaroscuro of
Rembrandt is often false and inconsistent, and in fact he relied largely on
public ignorance. But though arbitrary, it is always conducive to his
purpose."
"Conducive to his purpose!" There is much virtue in those four words.
Rembrandt probably knew as well as anybody that his lighting of a picture
was not a facsimile of the lighting of nature, or rather not the
chiaroscuro as seen by the average eye; but he had an aim, a vision before
him, and he did not hesitate to interpret that vision in his own way. Who
dares to say that Rembrandt was disloyal to nature? Our concern is not what
we should have done, but what Rembrandt did, seeing with his own eyes. And
the questions we should ask ourselves are:--Is the interpretation of the
world as seen through his eyes beautiful, suggestive, profound, and
stimulating? Does the statement of his personality in paint add to our
knowledge, educate our æsthetic perceptions, and extend our horizon by
showing us things that our imperfect vision does not see except through
him?
[Illustration: A YOUNG WOMAN IN A RED CHAIR HOLDING A PINK IN HER RIGHT
HAND
1656. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]
Comparisons are not only odious, but foolish. No sensible critic attempts a
comparison between Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt. He accepts them as
they are, and is grateful. But even the most obscure of mortals may have
his preferences, and a curious chapter in the lives of individuals who
have concerned themselves with painting would be the bewildering way in
which the pendulum of their appreciation and admiration has swung backwards
and forwards from Titian to Velasquez, from Velasquez to Rembrandt, and
sometimes back to Titian. It is often a question of mood.
There are moods when the regal abundance, the consummate craftsmanship of
Titian, the glow and splendour of his canvases, the range of them from _The
Man with the Glove_ in the Louvre to the _Bacchus and Ariadne_, force us to
place him on the summit of Parnassus. We are dazzled by this prince of
painters, dominating Venice at the height of her prosperity, inspired by
her, having around him, day by day, the glorious pictures that the genius
of Venice had produced. We follow his triumphant career, see him courted
and feted, recognise his detachment from the sorrow and suffering of the
unfortunate and unclassed, and amid the splendour of his career note his
avidity for the loaves and fishes of the world. Unlike Rembrandt, fortune
favoured Titian to the end. His career was a triumphal progress. We stand
in that small room at the Prado Museum at Madrid and gaze upon his
canvases, sumptuous and opulent, diffusing colour like a sunset,
indifferent to their story or meaning, happy and content with the flaming
feast outspread for our enjoyment. We stand before his _Entombment_ at the
Louvre, dumb before its superlative painting, with hardly a thought for the
tragedy that it represents. Titian accepts the literary motive, and the
artist in him straight forgets it. We walk from _The Entombment_ to the
little chamber where Rembrandt's _Christ at Emmaus_ hangs, and the heart of
Rembrandt is beating there. To Titian the glory of the world, to Rembrandt
all that man has felt and suffered, parting and sorrow, and the awakening
of joy. We do not compare the one painter with the other; we say: "This is
Titian, that is Rembrandt; each gives us his emotion." Foolish indeed it
seems in the face of these two pictures, and a thousand others, to say that
art should be this or that,--that a picture should or should not have a
literary or a philosophical motive. Painters give us themselves. We amuse
ourselves by placing them in schools, by analysing their achievement, by
scientific explanations of what they did just by instinct, as lambs
gambol--and behind all stands the Sphinx called Personality.
There are moods when the appeal of Velasquez is irresistible. Grave and
reticent, a craftsman miraculously equipped, detached, but not with the
Jovian detachment of Titian, this Spanish gentleman stalks silently across
the art stage. Hundreds of drawings of Rembrandt's exhibit evidence of the
infinite extent of his experiments after perfection. The drawings of
Velasquez can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He drew in paint upon
the canvas. From his portraits and pictures we gather not the faintest idea
of what he felt, what he thought, what he believed. One thing we know
absolutely--that he saw as keenly and as searchingly as any painter who has
ever lived. What he saw before him he could paint, and in the doing of it
he was unrivalled. His hand followed and obeyed his eye. When the object
was not before him, he falls short of his superlative standard. The figures
of Philip IV., of Olivares, and of Prince Baltazar Carlos in the three
great equestrian portraits are as finely drawn as man could make them.
Velasquez saw them; he did not see the prancing horses which they ride,
consequently our eyes dropping from the consummate figures are disappointed
at the conventional attitudes of the steeds. Velasquez, like Titian, moved
from success to success; both were friends of kings, both basked in royal
favour, neither had the disadvantage, or perhaps the great advantage, like
Rembrandt, of the education of adversity. Velasquez made two journeys into
Italy; he knew what men had accomplished in painting, and if he was not
largely influenced by Titian and Tintoretto, their work showed him what man
had done, what man could do, and indicated to him his own dormant powers.
Rembrandt was sufficient unto himself. There are moods when one is sure
that he stands at the head of the painting hierarchy. In spite of his
greatness, we feel that he is very near to our comprehension. What a
picture of the old painter towards the end of his life that saying of
Baldinucci presents. We are told that near the close of his career,
absorbed in his art, indifferent to the world, "when he was painting at his
easel he had come to wipe his brushes on the hinder portions of his dress."
Rembrandt looms out like some amorphous boulder, stationary,
lichen-stained, gathering time unto itself. He travelled so little that it
can be said he was untravelled. The works of other painters affected him
not at all. We are without proof that he was even interested in the work of
his contemporaries or predecessors. Life was his passion. One model was as
good as another. He looked at life, and life fired his imaginations. He
painted himself fifty times; he painted his friends, his relations, and the
people he met while prowling about the streets. His pencil was never idle.
Imagination, which confuses the judgment of so many, aided him, for his
imagination was not nourished by vanity, or the desire to produce an
effect, but flowed from the greatness of his brooding heart. He stood alone
during his life, an absorbed man, uninfluenced by any school; he stands
alone to-day. The world about him, and his thoughts and reflections, were
his only influences. He read few books, and the chief among them was the
Bible. Mr. Berenson has written an exhaustive and learned work on Lorenzo
Lotto, analysing his pictures year by year, and exhuming the various
painters who influenced Lotto at the different periods of his life. Mr.
Berenson's book extends to nearly three hundred pages. The influences of
the painting fraternity upon Rembrandt would not provide material for the
first paragraph of the first page of such a book.
His fame is assured. He is one of the great triumvirate. "He was greater,
perhaps," says Mr. Clausen, "than any other painter in human feeling and
sympathy, in dramatic sense and invention; and his imagination seemed
inexhaustible."
The Ryks Museum at Amsterdam may be said to have been designed as a shrine
for his _Night Watch_. Near by it hangs _The Syndics of the Cloth Company_,
excelled, in this particular class of work, by no picture in the world; but
it is by the portraits and the etchings that the sweep, profundity, and
versatility of Rembrandt's genius is exemplified. Truly his imagination was
inexhaustible.
It is an education to stand before his portraits in the National Gallery.
Observe the _Old Lady_, aged 83, the massive painting of her face, and the
outline of her figure set so firmly against the background. Here is
Realism, frank and straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. Turn
to the portrait of _A Jewish Rabbi_. Here is Idealism. You peer and peer,
and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the
black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. Luminous
black and luminous brown! Brown is the side of the face in shadow, brown is
the brow in shadow. All is tributary to the glory of the golden brown on
the lighted portion of the face. The portrait composes into a perfect
whole. The dim blacks and browns lead up to the golden brown illuminating
the old weary head, that wonderful golden brown--the secret of Rembrandt.
This old Jew lives through the magic art of Rembrandt. He crouches in the
frame, wistful and waiting, the eternal type, eternally dreaming the Jews'
dream that is still a dream.
THE END
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=The Scotsman.=--"Mr. Menpes has been a wanderer over the face of the earth
armed with brush and pencil, and he has brought back with him portfolios
filled with samples of the colour and sunshine, and of the life and form,
quaint or beautiful, of the most famous countries of the East and of the
West, and his charming book is a kind of album into which he has gathered
the cream of an artist's memories and impressions of the many countries he
has visited and sketched in."
* * * * *
JAPAN
=The Times.=--"Mr. Menpes's pictures are here given in most perfect
facsimile, and they form altogether a series of colour impressions of Japan
which may fairly be called unrivalled. Even without the narrative they
would show that Mr. Menpes is an enthusiast for Japan, her art and her
people; and very few European artists have succeeded in giving such
complete expression to an admiration in which all share."
* * * * *
WAR IMPRESSIONS
=Daily Telegraph.=--"One hardly knows which to admire the more--the skill
of the artist or the skill with which his studies have been reproduced, for
the colours of the originals are shown with marvellous fidelity, and the
delicate art of the impressionist loses nothing in the process. The book,
therefore, is a double triumph, and will therefore be prized by
collectors."
* * * * *
BRITTANY
=Publishers' Note.=--Mr. Menpes is perhaps exceptionally capable of
producing a true and vivid description of Brittany. He has lived and
painted there for many years. Every aspect of the country has been
faithfully depicted by him; every mood of Breton life, every trait of
character. Whether it is a pig-market that is portrayed, or a dignified
Breton surrounded by his household gods of oak and blue china in the
atmosphere of his own home--whether it is a fleet of fishing boats hung
with cobalt-blue nets, or group of mediæval houses in some ancient
town--each and every picture bears the impress of actuality. |
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