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'What! exclaimed Rembrandt, 'efface the finest figure in the picture? No, indeed; I prefer keeping the piece for myself. Which he did, and carried off the painting. Of Rembrandt's style it may be said that he painted with light, for frequently an object was indicated merely by the projection of a shadow on a wall. Often a luminous spot suggested, rather than defined, a hand or a head.
The walls were literally covered with pictures, among which was a Raphael. Above was a sort of museum and Rembrandt's studio. There was rare glass from Venice, busts, sketches, paintings, cloths, weapons, armour, plants, stuffed birds and shells, fans, and books and globes.
Rembrandt's conquests were not over the ideal, but the real. He did not contrive a new story or character, but we nearly owe to him a fifth part of painting, the knowledge of chiaroscuro a distinct power and element in art and nature.
In Rembrandt's and Terburg's Adoration of the Shepherds, the light emanates from the infant Christ; in Ribera's magnificent Deposition from the Cross, the dead Saviour and His companions are represented, not, as in the Entombments of Perugino and Raphael, in the open air, but in the ghastly light of the mouth of the sepulchre.
Thus nearly all the Dutch painters chose to paint the least handsome of the women whom they saw, as if they had agreed to throw discredit on the feminine type of their country. Rembrandt's "Susanna," to cite a subject which of all others required beauty, is an ugly Dutch servant, and the women painted by Steen, Brouwer, and others are not worth mentioning.
Go to the Print Room of the British Museum or to the Ionides Collection." A day or two later the enthusiast, carrying under his arm the roll of four Rembrandt's etchings that he had purchased for fourteen shillings and sixpence, ascended the stairs of the British Museum, and timidly opened the door marked, "Print Room. Students only." His reception agreeably surprised him.
His portraits have something of the strength of Rembrandt's. His street and tavern scenes rival Jan Steen's; but behind the mere representation of brutality, vice, crime, and misery we perceive not merely a skilled craftsman but a moral being, whom contact with misery deeply stirs and the sight of wickedness moves to indignation.
They took their uncle one day to see where William the Silent was assassinated, and the next to observe how Rembrandt's theory of guild portrait-painting differed from Van der Helst's, with a common enthusiasm. He scrutinized with patient loyalty everything that they indicated to him, and not infrequently they appeared to like very much the comments he offered.
He collected a series of photographs of the portraits and paintings, including his favourite pictures, such as The Jewish Rabbi in the National Gallery, Titus and The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in the Wallace collection, Rembrandt's Mother and The Singing Boy at Vienna; and he invested sixpence in a little manual recently published, called The Masterpieces of Rembrandt, containing sixty excellent reproductions of his portraits and pictures.
His works during this first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it. The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's career.
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