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I could hardly have said why, but I felt distinctly annoyed with Crozier. "Of course not. There's 'Rembrandt' on the frame, but I saw you'd modified it to 'Dutch School'; I apologize." He paused, but I offered no explanation. "What about it?" he went on. "Where did you pick it up?" As he leaned to the flame of the cigar-lighter his face seemed ruddy with enjoyment. "I got it for a song," I said.
'So that's well managed! he used to say. This sordid disposition often exposed him to practical jokes from his pupils; but he possessed a quiet temper, and was not easily annoyed. One day a rich citizen came in, and asked him the price of a certain picture. 'Two hundred florins, said Rembrandt. 'Agreed, said his visitor. 'I will pay you to-morrow, when I send for the picture.
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.
It is only that the future will be very unlucky in its art. There used to be on the cover of the "Portfolio Monographs" little medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr. Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely influential artists that ever lived.
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? The Hermitage, St. 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.
If ghosts are fond of money still, what a wrath his must be at the present value of his works! The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest of all his pieces to my mind.
Since Rembrandt carried portraiture to the point of perfection, two hundred and fifty years ago, Holland has been a land of artists and it is so even unto this day. John Jacob Astor was born of a Dutch family that had migrated down to Heidelberg from Antwerp. Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and was more or less of a stone-age cave-dweller.
It spoke to him of his present ideal of womanhood physical beauty, and he longed with all his heart to find a creature like that who would look on him with favor. There were other exhibitions one containing a genuine Rembrandt which impressed him, but none like these that had definitely stirred him. His interest in art was becoming eager. He wanted to find out all about it to do something himself.
There are thus multitudes of pictures by Turner which are direct imitations of other masters; especially of Claude, Wilson, Loutherbourg, Gaspar Poussin, Vandevelde, Cuyp, and Rembrandt. It has been argued by Mr. Leslie that, because Turner thus in his early years imitated many of the old masters, therefore he must to the end of his life have considered them greater than himself.
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.
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