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Yesterday it was Rembrandt’s school. Now that is passed, and Carrière is better and to-morrow, perchance, it will be Raphael or Whistler or some Japanese, why not? The one and only good sign which marks imitation is that it shows appreciation, and this of the standards is a good thing. Let each have its turn. Their synthesis may be you.
“Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter and Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt’s light is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much; the rest of the picture is sacrificed to this one object. That light will certainly appear the brightest which is surrounded with the greatest quantity of shade, supposing equal skill in the artist.”
There can be no shadow without light, and Rembrandt’s effort was to obtain this, rather than produce darkness. The feeling of light may also be broadly expressed by a direct illumination. Here the shadow plays a very small part, and the subject is presented in its outline. Under such an effect we lose variety but gain simplicity.
Compare with this Rembrandt’s famous circular composition, “Christ Healing the Sick,” wherein though the weight on either side of Christ is about evenly divided, the formality of placement has been most carefully avoided, and where the impression is merely that the Healer is the centre of a body of people who surround him.
Here was the sudden ending of Rembrandt’s career as a painter of portraits, only one canvas of an important group being painted thereafter—the “Syndics.” A certain reason in this popular criticism cannot be denied. The composition is unnecessarily scattered and the placements arbitrary, though through the radial lines of pikes and flag pole the scattered parts are drawn together.
There are three types of group composition; first, where the subject’s interest is centred upon an object or idea within the picture as in “The Cabaret” or Rembrandt’s “Doctors” surrounding a dissecting table; second, where the attraction lies outside the picture as in the “Syndics” or the “Night Watch,” and third, where absolute repose is expressed and the sentiment of reverie has dominated the group, as in “The Madonna of the Chair,” and the ordinary family photograph.
So do we get light in the composition of simple elements, by sacrifice of some one or more, or a mass of them, to the demands of the lighter parts. “Learn to think in shadows,” says Ruskin. Rembrandt’s art entire, is the best case in point. A low toned and much colored white may be made brilliant by dark opposition.
In the greatest of Rembrandt’s portrait groups, “The Syndics,” his problem involved the placement of six figures. Four are seated at the far side of a table looking toward us, the fifth, on the near side, rises and looks toward us.
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