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In the midst of his troubles and losses, Hendrickje Stoffels, whose portrait hangs in the Louvre, was the friend who cheered and comforted him. She had been his servant; afterward she lived with him as his wife, though legally they were not married. To Titus, as to her own children, she was ever a tender mother, and Titus, in return, seems to have loved her no less well.
So much for his schooling. At the age of twenty-one he produced a picture called St. Paul in Prison, and Gerard Dou became his pupil. In 1631 he left Leyden and settled in Amsterdam. In 1634 he married Saskia van Uylenborch, who bore him three children, and Titus was the youngest. Some years later he had two daughters by his servant, Hendrickje Stoffels. Perhaps he married her.
It is supposed that only two of the etchings were made expressly for publication the Descent from the Cross, and the Ecce Homo; but Rembrandt may have benefited from the sale of them through the partnership that was formed in 1660 between his son Titus and Hendrickje Stoffels. The Hermitage, St. In the eighteenth century certain connoisseurs had already made collections of his etchings.
Many of his finest portraits those of Hendrickje Stoffels, of his son, of himself in his old age, of the Burgomeister Six, above all, his masterpiece, "The Syndics of the Guild of Clothmakers," now in Amsterdam; many of his finest etchings, the little landscapes, the famous "Hundred Guilder Print," "Christ Healing the Sick," belong to this later period.
Section F on the L. is occupied by a rich collection of Rembrandt's works: 2548, the oft-reproduced Flayed Ox, is a masterly rendering of an unattractive subject; no number, Old Man Reading; in 2547 the artist has immortalised his faithful servant, Hendrickje Stoffels; 2536, Tobit and the Angel; 2549 and 2550, Bathsheba, and Susannah and the Elders are two studies of the nude; 2542, The Joiner's Family, formerly known as the Holy Family; 2540, Philosopher in Meditation. 2537, The Good Samaritan; and 2539, The Supper at Emmaus, are painted with profound and reverent piety.
The fine dresses that once belonged to Saskia were seized: they even took her wedding-gown: and wanton women bid against the nobility for the possession of these things. Rembrandt was stripped of his sketches, and these were sold in bundles the very sweat of his brain for years. Then he was turned into the streets. But Hendrickje Stoffels still clung to him, his only friend.
So sure had Rembrandt been of his powers that he did not conceive that his income could drop from thirty thousand florins a year to scarcely a fifth of that. Then his relations with Hendrickje Stoffels had displeased society. She was his housekeeper, servant and model a woman without education or refinement, we are told.
The famous Dresden picture of himself with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life.
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