United States or Trinidad and Tobago ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had nearly finished it, when intelligence was brought him of the death of a tame ape which he greatly loved. The creature had fallen off the roof of the house into the street. Without interrupting his work, Rembrandt burst into loud lamentations, and after some time announced that the piece was finished.
It is something that comes and dances before me as I play, the same thing always. I saw it to-night." "What sort of thing?" Velasco stared suddenly at the opposite wall. "What is that painting there, Ritter?" "The one over the piano? I bought it in St. Petersburg years ago, when I was touring: a copy of the Rembrandt in the 'Hermitage. Don't you know it?" "What is it?"
"My child," she said, "if you will work in the gallery every day I will sew in one of the great magasans." To see that he commenced fairly, she went with him into the Louvre, and he selected a fine Rembrandt an old man, bearded and scarred, massively characterized, and clothed in magic light and shadow.
I covered him with my revolver and fairly drove him into a bedroom and locked him in." "So you killed with both barrels?" Littimer cried, with infinite enjoyment. "Then the other one came. He came to steal the Rembrandt." "Nothing of the kind," the wretched Henson cried. "I came to give you a lesson, Lord Littimer.
What a glorious, Godlike figure, and yet so prone to wrath and error, so lovably human. How he is modelled all round like a Rembrandt while your starveling monks have made of your Christ a mere decorative figure with a gold halo. O Moshé Rabbenu, Moses our teacher indeed! No, Christ was not the first nor the last of our race to wear a crown of thorns.
Despite of its evident defects, the germs of rare talent which it evinced struck the burgomaster; and sending for the young artist, he offered to give him a recommendation to a celebrated painter living at Amsterdam, under whom he would have far more opportunity of improvement than with his present instructor. Rembrandt accepted the offer, and during the following year toiled incessantly.
Suppose he stands before the revolving frame of Rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed? would his imagination be stirred? Perhaps so: perhaps not.
Before returning to town, they spent a delightful fortnight with Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton, where, says Haydon, 'we dined with the Claude and Rembrandt before us, and breakfasted with the Rubens landscape, and did nothing, morning, noon, and night, but think of painting, talk of painting, and wake to paint again.
That he should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez the romanticist and the naturalist and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
This is true of all his works, almost without exception portraits, pictures both large and small, and etchings. Rembrandt loved to paint unusual things. We are apt to think that an unusual thing is not natural; but if we closely observe nature, especially the effect of light and shade, we shall find that no imagination could make pictures more wonderful than the reality we see.
Word Of The Day