WetCanvas: ArtsSchool Online: Rembrandt
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REMBRANDT
By: P. Roger Elliott
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn was born in Leiden (then spelled Leyden) on 15 July 1606. His father Harmen (Rembrandt's middle name means "son of Harmen") was a miller and his mother Cornelia was the daughter of a baker. The family took their name from the nearby "Rijnmill", a mill on the Rijn (a tributary of the Rhine).
At this time Leiden was second only to Amsterdam in size and importance among the towns of the Netherlands, and Rembrandt's family were comfortably off members of the lower middle class. Rembrandt was the eighth of his mother's nine children.
Although almost nothing is known of Rembrandt's boyhood, it is safe to assume that he was intellectually the brightest of the children, for while his brothers were sent to learn trades, he became a pupil at the Latin School in Leiden when he was about seven. There he must have gained a thorough knowledge of Latin and absorbed the background of classical history and mythology that would later be put to use in his paintings.
By the age of 14, Rembrandt was studying at Leiden University, which was one of the most distinguished in Europe. His stay was short-lived however, for within a few months he had convinced his parents that his talents were artistic rather han scholarly, so they abandoned their plans for him to become a member of a learned profession and allowed him to be apprenticed to a painter. The decision was no doubt a very reluctant one, for having a lawyer or civic adminstrator as a son would have taken them a rung or two up the social ladder.
The earliest source of information we have on Rembrandt is contained in the second edition (1641) of a book called Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden (Description of the City of Leiden), by Jan Orlers, who was mayor of the city. He tells us that Rembrandt's parents "took him to the well painting Mr. Jacob Isaaxszoon van Swanenburgh in order that he might be taught and educated by him, with whom he remained about three years". Swanenburgh is an obscure figure and Rembrandt probably learned little more than the rudiments of his trade from him, for although in the course of his career he painted most subjects, he never tried his hand at either of Swanenburgh's specialities - architectural scenes and views of hell.
 A NEW MASTER
None of Rembrandt's work from this stage in his life survives but he is said to have shown so much promise that his father decided to further his career by sending him to Amsterdam to study with a much more significant artist than Swanenburgh - pieter Lastman, at this time one of the leading painters in the country. Lastman had traveled in Italy as a young man and had come back eager to show off all he had learned there. His paintings were clever, lively and polished, full of vivid gestures and expressions, and he liked to paint historical and hythological subjects in which he could demonstrate his skill in depicting elaborate costumes and exotic details. Rembrandt stayed only six months with him, but Lastman's work had a powerful effect; he inherited his master's love of colorful stories and his earliest surviving paintings are heavily indebted to him in both subject and treatment.
After he left Lastman, Rembrandt may also have spent some time working in the studios of Jan Pynas and Joris van Schooten, but this can only have been briefly, for by 1625 he had set up as an independent artist in Leiden. There he worked in close association with Jan Lievens who was a year younger than himself. Like Rembrandt, Lievens was a native of Leiden and had studied in Amsterdam with Lastman. They probably shared a studio for a while and their work was sometimes so similar as to cause confusion: an inventory made in 1632 lists as picture as "done by Rembrandt or Jan Lievens", and there is a portrait of a child in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam signed "Rembrandt geretucee...Lieve..." (Lievens retouched by Rembrandt).
The two young artists soon established reputations as major talents in the making. On 14 February 1628, Rembrandt - still only 21 - took on his first pupil, Gerard Dou, and in that year a visitor from Utrecht, the lawyer Aernout van Buchellm wrote in his notebook "The Leiden miller's son is greatly praised". In the following year another visitor to Leiden wrote a much fuller account of Rembrandt in his formative years. This was Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the head of state, Prince Frederik Henry of Orange, and one of the most remarkable men of his time. A diplomat and polylingual scholar (he translated John Donne's poems into Dutch), he was also passionately interested in the arts and would have become a painter himself but for parental disapproval. Huygens called on Rembrandt and Leivens (the latter had painted his portrait two years earlier) and praised both of them highly. He suggested they should visit Italy, "for if they become familiar with Raphael and Michelangelo, they would reach the height of painting". But the two artists said they had no time to travel and that they could in any case see plenty of good Italian paintings in Holland.
SUCCESS AS A PORTRAIT PAINTER
Although he painted (and etched) several portraits of himself and members of his family during his Leiden period, Rembrandt concentrated on figure paintings, notably ones of old men depicted as biblical characters or philosophers, and it was not until 1631 that he is known to have produced his first formal commissioned portrait. This was of the rich Amsterdam merchant Nicolaes Ruts. Rembrandt must have realized that in such works he had a recipe for success, for in late 1631 or early 1632 he moved to Amsterdam and during the next few years devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture. He moved into the home of the picture dealer van Uylenburgh, with whom he had had business dealings while still living in Leiden, and very rapidly became the city's leading portraitist. There were other very talented portrait painters working there, notably Thomas de Keyser, but Rembrandt could match them in delicacy of painting costumes and glossiness of finish, and far outstipped them in capturing on canvas a sense of life and personality.
Rembrandt worked with enormous energy in his early days in Amsterdam to consolidate his success. About 50 of his surviving paintings are dated 1632 or 1633 (almost all of them portraits) and even without allowing for the ones that must have disappeared over the centuries, that is a prodigious output. His most famous painting from this time is undoubtedly The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, which more than any other work showed how far he was ahead of his rivals. Such group portraits were very popular in the Netherlands, and it was a hard task for the painter to bring together a group of virtually identically dressed men without making the picture look rather like a school photograph. Rembrant's brilliantly arranged group showed the originality of his mind and his superb painting skills. In 1634, Rembrandt, then 28, married Saskia van Uylenburgh, the 21-year-old cousin of his picture-dealer associate. Saskis was not only from a higher social class than Rembrandt but also fairly well off as she was an orphan and had been left money by her parents. The couple lived with her cousin Hendrik van Uylenburgh for a while and then rented a house on the fashionable Niewe Doelenstraat. We have no first-hand accounts of Rembrandt's relationship with Saskia, but they are hardly necessary, for it was obvious from his paintings and drawings that he worshiped her. Unfortunately their happiness was marred by a succession of infant deaths; between 1635 and 1640 Saskia gave birth to a boy (Rumbartus) and two girls (both named Cornelia after Rembrant's mother), but none lived longer than two months. Saskia had never been robust and the repeated ordeal weakened her considerably.
Although he had these domestic worries to contend with, Rembrant's material fortunes were never greater than in the second half of the 1630s. He had all the pupils and commissions he could handle. Writing 50 years after his death, the Dutch painter and historian Arnold Houbracken said that clients had to beg him for pictures and the large sums he was earning enabled him to endulge his passion for collecting. He bought not only paintings, drawings and engravings, but also arms and armor, medals, old costumes, indeed anything that took his fancy or that he thought might come in useful as a prop.