The Legend and the Man
The Legend and the Man
from:
"The Legend and the Man," in The World of Rembrandt: 1606-1669 (Time-Life Library of Art), Walter Wallace, New York, 1968, pp. 17-25
In life Rembrandt suffered far more misfortune than falls                to the lot of an ordinary man, and he bore it with the utmost nobility.                Three centuries after his death the misfortune, if a man long deceased can                be said to endure such a thing, continues. To be sure, it is no longer the                fashion for critics to attack him both as artist and human being. Today                the injury is done with a fond smile by writers of romantic biographies                and films who mean to honor him. Their revised standard version of                Rembrandt's life runs approximately as follows:
"The child of poor, ignorant Dutch peasants, Rembrandt was born with                  near-miraculous skill in art. As an uneducated young man, he established                  himself in Amsterdam, married a beautiful, wealthy, sympathetic girl named                  Saskia, and enjoyed a brief period of prosperity and fame. However, because                  men of genius are always misunderstood by the public, fate snatched him by the                  throat. The important burghers of the city, who may not have known much about                  art but knew what they liked, gave him an enormous commission - the Night                    Watch - in which the burghers were to be painted in traditional postures and                  lights. Rembrandt responded with a masterpiece, a fact unfortunately apparent                  only to him and his wife. Everyone else, from the burghers to the                  herring-peddlers, thought the painting was dreadful. Rembrandt's patrons                  hooted in rage and derision, demanding changes that the artist, secure in the                  knowledge that posterity would vindicate him, stubbornly refused to make.
"At this point, because it is not customary for a genius to suffer a single                    setback but to be overwhelmed by multiple catastrophes, Rembrandt's wife died,                    the Night Watch was ripped from the wall and placed in some indecorous                    location, his friends deserted him .and he was hounded into bankruptcy. In his                    final years no one would commission a painting from him; he was reduced to                    making self-portraits, which he did whenever he could cadge the necessary                    materials from his art-supply dealer. His only comforters were his san Titus                    and his mistress Hendrickje, both of whom died in heartrending circumstances.                    Prematurely aged at 63, he passed away in such obscurity that the burghers,                    observing his pathetic funeral, inquired, 'Who was he?' However, even at that                    dark hour the mills of the gods were slowly grinding, and in our own time the                    verdict in favor of Rembrandt's greatness has been amply reaffirmed by the                    trustees of New York's Metropolitan Museum, who not long ago paid 52.3 million                    for his Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer                    and were very lucky to get it at the price. Indeed, as the Metropolitan's                    director Thomas Hoving recently remarked, 'Look at that chain [on Aristotle's                    shoulder]. That alone is worth two million three!' "
The foregoing summary is an interesting and tidy one, and presents the view                of Rembrandt generally seen by the world. In most respects, however, it is                dead wrong. Rembrandt was not a peasant nor was he uneducated. The Night Watch did not bring about his downfall; indeed, he never had a "downfall" in the                dramatic sense. And when he died, there remained more than a few people who                held him in the highest regard. Nonetheless, myths die hard, and that of                Rembrandt is durable. In the United States the myth is particularly                widespread, in part because of a 1936 film in which Charles Laughton portrayed                the artist. Despite its age, Laughton's Rembrandt remains a valuable                commercial property, is frequently shown on television, and has been seen and                presumably accepted at face value by an enormous number of people, upwards of                100 million. However, through no fault of Laughton's, who in private life was                a serious connoisseur of art, the script with which he was obliged to work was                not a masterpiece of accuracy. Whenever the film is shown, another                half-million viewers are exposed to the myth, but whenever a scholar ferrets                out a new scrap of truth about Rembrandt and publishes it in an art journal,                only a relative handful of fellow-scholars are aware of it. There is, of                course, nothing novel in this situation-Michelangelo, Leonardo, van Gogh,                Toulouse-Lautrec and others have been similarly treated-but Rembrandt has                endured more  than the rules of the game should allow.
In Rembrandt's case myth-making comes easily as an alternative to                  fact-finding. Romantics and scholars alike are handicapped by a scarcity of                  contemporary information, not only about Rembrandt but about most of the                  artists who participated in the great sunburst of painting in the Netherlands of the 17th Century. Rembrandt left no journal or notebook, and only seven of                  his letters have been located-all addressed to the same man, concerning a                  specific project and revealing little of his thought or personality. Yet even                  this thin sheaf is comparatively a rich hoard. From the hands of other major                  artists of Rembrandt's time - Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Jacob van Ruisdael - not a                  solitary note has been found. Possibly Dutch artists rarely wrote letters, but                  it seems more likely that their correspondence was not thought worth keeping.
Because Rembrandt himself is almost mute - except in the majestic eloquence                  of his art - it is necessary to turn for information to other 17th Century                  sources. The Dutch archives, however, contain only one document of real                  interest: the inventory of Rembrandt's possessions at the time he declared                  himself insolvent. Otherwise there are only the bare bones of history - records                  of baptisms, marriage and deaths. The accounts of contemporary biographers are                  few and in several instances misleading. The first treatment of Rembrandt,                  which appeared in 1641 as part of a history of his                  birthplace, the town of Leiden, was written by a onetime burgomaster, Jan                  Orlers. Nothing in Orlers' work has been found to be inaccurate, but it covers                  less than half of Rembrandt's artistic career - his early years - and is only a                  few hundred words in length. In 1675, six years after Rembrandt's death,                  Joachim von Sandrart, a German artist who had known him, produced a memoir of                  about 800 words. These two meager accounts, plus some observations in the                  autobiography of the Dutch scholar-statesman Constantin Huygens, constitute                  almost the entire body of material written by men who had first-hand knowledge                  of Rembrandt.
In 1686 an Italian churchman and art historian, Filippo Baldinucci, who                  obtained his information from one of Rembrandt' pupils, published a brief                  commentary about him as part of a volume dealing with many graphic artists. It                  was not until 1718, nearly a half-century after Rembrandt's death, that the                  first full-dress biography appeared-and even that is very slim by modern                  standards. Written by Amold Houbraken, whose De Groote Schouburgh der                    Nederlantsche Kunstschilders (Great Theater of Netherlandish Artists) remains                  the best source-book on Dutch artists of the period, it contains valuable                  comments on Rembrandt's work as it was then viewed. In areas outside art,                  however, it has proved as vulnerable as earlier accounts. Sandrart had                  implanted the legend that Rembrandt was an ignoramus who "could but poorly                  read Netherlandish and hence profit but little from books." Baldinucci left                  the misinformation that Rembrandt worked for the court of Sweden. When it was                  Houbraken's turn to set down the facts, he mislocated the artist's birthplace,                  added five years to his life and noted that he was an only son (Rembrandt had                  four brothers).
It may appear picayune to dwell on these errors, but they make it                  difficult not to raise an eyebrow at some of the tales Houbraken supplies when                  he sets out to describe Rembrandt as a man. Houbraken says, for example, that                  Rembrandt was a miserly soul whose avarice was such that "his pupils, who                  noticed this, often for fun would paint on the floor or elsewhere, where he                  was bound to pass, pennies, two-penny pieces and shillings ..after which he                  frequently stretched out his hand in vain, without letting anything be noticed                  as he was embarrassed through his mistake." The biographer also reports that                  Rembrandt, who willfully broke all the "rules," once "painted a picture in                  which the colors were so heavily loaded that you could lift it from the floor                  by the nose." Other stories, however, are not so easy to reject. There is some                  evidence that Rembrandt was at times irascible and whimsical. According to                  Houbraken, "One day he was working on a great portrait group in which man and                  wife and children were to be seen. When he had half completed it, his                  [Rembrandt's] monkey happened to die. As he had no other canvas available at                  the moment, he portrayed the dead ape in the aforesaid picture. Naturally the                  people concerned would not tolerate the disgusting dead ape alongside of them                  in the picture. But no: he so adored the model offered by the dead ape that he                  would rather keep the unfinished picture than obliterate the ape in order to                  please the people portrayed by him." Possibly the tale is true. Rembrandt was                  a man of highly independent mind, delighted in drawing and painting animals,                  and may have thought the dead monkey more interesting than the particular                  family he was dealing with.
The relative lack of accurate contemporary accounts of Rembrandt is not the                  result of carelessness or loss through the centuries, nor is it because he was                  not widely known and admired during his lifetime; he was. The difficulty stems                  in large part from the temperament of the Dutch people, who have never been at                  ease in the world of reflective or descriptive prose. They take the view that                  a painting is to be looked at, beer is to be drunk and life is to be                  lived - without the aid of a tedious libretto. With one or two notable                  exceptions, the Dutch nave not produced poets, playwrights, novelists,                  letter-writers or critics of the first rank. They prefer to act and wordlessly                  to contemplate, not to involve themselves in comment or analysis, and thus                  during the golden century of their art they made only sparse notes about their                  greatest painters.
This reticence in prose had its counterpart in art. During Rembrandt's                  lifetime the Dutch people, numbering fewer than three million, accomplished                  prodigies. They threw off the yoke of Spain and established an independent                  nation. On the sea they challenged England and for a time forced that great                  maritime power into second place. The Channel and the North Sea, the green,                  rich Indies of the East and West heard the thunder of their cannon and saw the                  triumph of their flag. But Dutch artists rarely glorified such things; instead                  they perfected the still life.
Fortunately, the advanced research techniques of modern scholars, spurred by                  the commemoration in 1969 of the 300th anniversary of Rembrandt's death, have                  made it possible to extract a good deal of new information from the silent                  past and to correct errors made in the intervening centuries. Sandrart's view                  of Rembrandt as a semi-literate has been demolished, and so too--at least                  among students of art history--has been the notion that the Night Watch marked a sudden, dramatic downturn in Rembrandt's fortunes. It is now known that the                  artist never went to Sweden, nor did he, as other old legends insist, reside                  for a time in England or travel in Italy. Thus, even if frequently through the                  correction of mistakes, the state of knowledge about him has been considerably                  increased. In relation to the remarkable breadth and depth of Rembrandt's art                  it is fascinating to find, at long last, that he may never have left his                  homeland; indeed, that he probably. passed his entire lire within a radius of                  only a few score miles. All his voyaging was done on the inward sea of his own                  spirit.
In any case the real measure of Rembrandt is to be found in his works, and                  even a hasty glance at them reveals much that is not included in his myth.                  Although he is commonly associated with only a half-dozen paintings. The                    Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, the. Night Watch, The Syndics of the Drapers'                      Guild, the Aristotle and Homer, and two or three self- portraits - he was, in                  fact, one of the most productive artists the world has known. As many as 2,300                  of his works survive and have thus far been identified-some 600 paintings,                  1,400 drawings and 300 etchings.
It is possible that still others will come to light in our rime. Once                  recent identification of one of his paintings was made only in 1780. Although                  it is not a great work of art, it has considerable importance because it is                  Rembrandt's earliest known dated painting. Executed on a wooden panel, it                  depicts his version of the martyrdom by stoning of St. Stephen. Long the                  property of the museum of Lyons in France, it was attributed vaguely to "the                  school of Rembrandt" and relegated to a storeroom until two Dutch scholars,                  suspecting its true authorship, suggested that a comer of it be cleaned. A few                  swipes of the swab revealed the undoubted monogram of the master and the date,                  1625, when he was only 18 or 19.
Although there is a possibility that some Rembrandt drawings, or even a                  cache of them, will turn up one day in an old chest or bureau drawer, the                  likelihood of a major discovery is not great. Collectors and connoisseurs have                  apparently exhausted the field. However, single drawings are still                  occasionally found. The task of firmly attributing a drawing to Rembrandt is                  by no means easy; he was a prodigiously active draftsman who rarely signed his                  small sketches and used whatever paper he happened to find handy, including                  printed pages, the backs of bills and even of funeral announcements. Most of                  his drawings can be identified only on stylistic grounds, and in this area                  scholars are not in unanimous agreement.
Among the 2,300 works there are at least 90 self-portraits - 60 of them                  paintings and the rest etchings and drawings. In addition, Rembrandt's  face appears in at least five other works as that of a spectator                  or participant in the action. No other great artist is known to have                  represented himself so frequently, which suggests a well-developed vanity on                  his part - until the portraits are studied. Although there were occasions in his                  young manhood when he may have wished to appear handsomer than he was, and                  although he sometimes used his own face merely as a model, contorting it into                  expressions of anger, joy or shock, he took, in general, a very penetrating,                  even merciless view of himself. Rembrandt's overriding artistic concern was                  with the human spirit or, in a phrase that appears in one of his letters, with                  expressing "the greatest inward emotion." In his quest for an understanding of                  mankind he found it necessary to begin with self-searching; in the visual arts                  no one has more closely followed the ancient Greek dictum, "Know thyself," with all the courage that such a seemingly simple injunction demands. A moving                  spiritual autobiography can be extracted from his self-portraits, but it is                  best to turn first to the physical events of his early life.
Self Portrait as a Young Man
c. 1628
22.5 x 18.6 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden, about 25 miles south of                  Amsterdam, on the 15th of July, 1606. His father, Harmen, was a miller whose                  surname, van Rijn, indicates that the family had lived for some generations                  beside or near the Rhine River. His mother, Comelia (or Neeltgen)                  WilIemsdochter van Zuytbrouck, was a baker's daughter. Traditionally their                  large family - Rembrandt was the eighth of nine children - has been described as                  poor and struggling. The artist's vitality and his almost ferocious energy,                  some critics suggest, derived from his "peasant" background and his desire to                  rise above it. However, there is no evidence that the van Rijns were                  impoverished potato-eaters.
When Rembrandt' mother died in 1640 she left an estate valued at some                  10,000 florins. The precise value of that currency is very difficult to                  calculate now, but it is known that the wage of a 17th Century Dutch                  craftsman - a weaver, for example-was only three or four florins for a 12-hour                  day. Thus it appears that the family was fairly well-off. In some of his early                  self-portraits Rembrandt chose to represent himself as a beggar and as a young                  rebel who appeared to have a grudge against the world; his face was wide, with                  small eyes, a broad nose and powerful jaw. But these are not necessarily the                  features of a country clod, and if Rembrandt had some quarrel with the world                  it may have been rooted in his anger at the inhumanity of man rather than in                  his family circumstances.
Rembrandt's birth coincided closely with that of the Dutch nation. For                  generations the 17 provinces of the Low Countries (the Netherlands, Belgium                  and Luxembourg) had been under the rule of Catholic Spain. However in 1609,                  when Rembrandt was three, the seven northern provinces under the leadership of                  the noble House of Orange, finally achieved the freedom for which they had                  been struggling for 40 years. Spain did not formally recognize their                  independence, but in fact the Spanish were seldom again a serious menace to                  Dutch liberty. The United Provinces, as the nation was then called, included                  Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guederland, Overijssel, Frieslànd and Groningen. Of                  these, Holland was the wealthiest and most populous and for that reason its                  name was frequently used by foreigners to refer to the whole country, to the annoyance of the citizens of the other six provinces.
The new nation was democratic in its institutions and vigilant in                  safeguarding them. The House of Orange, however successful it had been in                  rallying and leading the people, was unable to form a strong central movement.                  The various provinces sent representatives to the modest court at The Hague,                  but each province regarded itself as  autonomous in all matters save                  defense and foreign policy.
In this loose federation, the two traditional sources of patronage for                  artists were no longer available. During the first decades of their freedom                  the egalitarian Dutch cared little for titles and the courtly life, and                  although the House of Orange did commission works of art (including at least                  seven paintings by Rembrandt), aristocratic patronage was negligible. The                  other source of patronage, the Catholic Church, was also shut off. While                  Catholics still formed a sizable segment of the population when the United                  Provinces carne into being, gradually they were sumerged in the rising tide of                  Protestantism, particularly Calvinism. More and more, the Catholic faithful                  were compelled to worship in private - their churches were stripped of their                  altars and often were taken over for use by Protestants. In these                  circumstances, the Church could no longer supply the rich commissions that had                  nourished artists since the beginning of the Renaissance.
Thus, for the first time in history, painters                  assumed the independent but precarious position in society that-they still                  occupy. Fortunately for 17th Century Dutch artists, of whom there were                  literally thousands, the ordinary citizens of the country replaced the Church                  and the aristocracy as purchasers of paintings. (Sculpture never became a                  major art form among the Dutch. There is no facile explanation for this;                  perhaps it was because monumental sculpture seemed out of place in the comfortable decor of a middle-class home, or perhaps it was because the solid                  burgher, who might pay a fair sum for a canvas, found his sense of propriety                  offended by the notion of something so grandiose, and reminiscent of "popish" church art, a statue.)
Self Portrait
Museum het Rembrandthuis
Amsterdam
The extent to which the average Dutchman participated in the art market is                  almost beyond belief. If a rough parallel may be drawn, the  situation                  will be comparable when every second family in the United States possesses an                  original painting. As to why the Dutch were so fascinated by art, there is                  again no ready explanation. This was simply the particular form of creativity                  that appealed to them and for which they had enormous talent. To be sure, the                  typical citizen was inclined to regard painting merely as wall decoration, and                  his taste tended strongly to an almost photographic naturalism in portraits                  and scenes of everyday life, but he bought canvases in remarkable quantity.                  The English traveler Peter Mundy, who visited Amsterdam in 1640, noted with                  some astonishment that as for the Art of Painting and                  the affection off the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond                  them there having been in this Country Many excellent Men in that Facullty,                  some att present, as Rimbrant, etts., All in general striving to adorne their                  houses, especially the outer or street roome, with costly peeces, Butchers and                  bakers not much inferior in their shoppes, which are Fairely sett Forth, rea                  many tymes blacksmithes, Coblers, etts., will have some picture or other by                  their Forge and in their stalle. ..."
In such a climate it was natural for artists to be                  extremely productive. If it can be believed, it is recorded that Michiel van                  Miereveld, an able Delft painter, produced more than 10,000 portraits in his                  career. Miereveld lived to be 74, and if he began painting at 14 and continued                  for 60 years, his output averaged better than three portraits a week. It is                  also record ed that Cornelis Ketel, another good artist, who apparently became                  bored with the endless turning out of portraits, used to amuse himself and his                  clients by painting with his toes.
As may be suggested by Miereveld's and Ketel's activities, the Dutch artist                  of the 17th Century was frank to acknowledge himself as a craftsman, a                  producer of goods. Although such masters of the High Renaissance as Leonardo                  and Michelangelo had made it very plain, in the Italy of the preceding                  century, that art was no mechanical exercise but the loftiest of callings,                  Dutch painters had little of that sentiment. In general they accepted their                  fairly humble status (Rembrandt took exception to this) and asked no special                  deference. As a rule they did not feel called upon, as had the Italians, to write augmentative treatises to explain themselves and their theories-and                  therein lies still another reason for the sparseness of                  knowledge about them.
Despite the vigor of the art market, exceedingly few Dutch painters prospered and died rich. An oversupply of paintings depressed prices, with the                  result that a good canvas sometimes sold for as little as 10 or 15 florins.                  Rembrandt, at the height of his popularity, received the resoundingly handsome sum of 1,600 florins for the Night Watch, and later became bankrupt not through lack of good                  commissions but through mismanagement of his affairs. But other fine artists                  were forced to become tavernkeepers or ferrymen in order to make ends meet. It                  is said that Hercules Seghers, whose romantic scenes influenced Rembrandt's                  landscapes, withdrew tram the struggle and died an alcoholic. Frans Hals and                  Meindert Hobbema had grim financial problems. Jan Vermeer at the time of his                  death owed a baker's bill of 617 florins, for which the baker (no doubt grudgingly) was obliged to accept two paintings, their identity since lost that might have made his descendants                  incalculably rich.
Rembrandt's decision to become an artist, or perhaps more accurately his                  parents' decision to establish him in such a chancy career, was not taken                  early. As a boy he must have impressed his parents as the most promising of                  their children--of their other sons who survived to manhood, one be- carne                  first a cobbler and then a miller, and another a baker - and accordingly                  they sent Rembrandt to the Latin School in Leiden to prepare him for a learned                  profession. In the United Provinces it was not unthinkable that a miller's son could aspire to any position, however high, and his parents evidently knew                  the value of an education. Among Rembrandt's drawings there is one which shows                  a small family group, probably his own, seated around a book on a candlelit                  table. His mother, whom he often portrayed with a Bible on her knees and who                  several times served as a model in his Biblical paintings, was a devout reader                  of Scripture; doubtless he first absorbed from her the sense of God, man and                  nature that was to make him the most profoundly Christian of all Protestant                  artists.
Self Portrait as Zeuxis