REMBRANDT
Itis a bold thing to say, but yet I think it is a true one,—and the saying is welcome to surprise the academic and conventional—that if the painted work of Rembrandt did not exist at all, and if his drawings were unknown, the three hundred etchings that he wrought during some forty years of labour would assert for him, amongst all capable judges, a claim to that place, precisely, which he is now admitted to occupy. It is not that in saying this I would underrate for a moment the skill of the pure colourist, the dexterity of the juggler who plays with subtle hue, the master of the material which is applied to prepared canvas; but that if one asks oneself, ‘What are the qualities, really, which in any Art lead us to assign to the practitioner of it his particular and permanent station?’ one finds shortly that one’s answer has to be the following, or something like it: ‘The qualities are an alert freshness and comprehensiveness of spirit, an individual vision of the world, and the knowledge howbest to wield the instrument by which that vision is expressed.’
In the case of a writer, language is the instrument, and Sterne’s or Molière’s perception and sensitiveness are made evident in words. In the case of a pictorial artist, paint may be the instrument, or water-colour, or the humble but expressive pencil—or the instrument may be that which was Rembrandt’s more than any other’s: it may be the needle of the etcher.
I hope that, in my enumeration of the qualities of intellect and craftsmanship that make for excellence in creative Literature and in pictorial Design, I have cut the ground from under the feet of those who advocate the work of craftsmen merely—those who consider that intechniquelies the end as well as the beginning of success. Even to the most casual of the students of the Arts—to the most superficial observer of the means whereby the several performers may produce their effects, in story, drawing, print—it can scarcely be necessary to say that a command oftechniquemust be demanded by the severe and accurate judge. But the genius of a man of the first order—a Goethe, Coleridge, Balzac, Rembrandt, Turner—is, as it seems to me, misunderstood altogether, if the flexibilityand freshness of spirit and the originality of vision are not remembered and praised when we praise too the excellent command of technical means. And in the case of Rembrandt, the character and charm of whose three hundred etchings are the theme of my discourse, the first thing to take account of is that we have to deal not only with a conjurer of the brush and a magician of the needle, but with a deep soul. Anâme d’élite—that is the true phrase for it: a being not above human faults, but above average human excellence; a reveller in pageantry, who yet had a tender eye for the large lines of simple landscape; an artist who, with masculine perception of the import of material things, was alive, constantly and keenly, also to the concerns of the spirit; a judge of character, who understood and who dissected all that he portrayed; a man of feeling, who rendered to the full the pathos of age, of suffering, and of Death—who somehow rendered also, as in the wistful portrait of the Prince of Orange, the incommunicable pathos of Youth.
Over all Rembrandt’s work, from the beginning to the end of it, as much on canvas as in drawing, as much in drawing as in etching, there reigns an absolute sincerity. It was himself that he expressed.Warped by no prejudice, modified by no fashion, his art, during the generation and a half in which he did his joyful labour—in the midst of personal triumph, in the midst, too, of personal disaster—recorded his own unaffected perception of the outward world and his own profound vision of the souls and the experiences of men. To study his work, therefore, is, if we have the wit, to have the opportunity to glean from it that which it is open to us to glean always from the greatest Classics—the richer harvest of a familiarity not alone with technical achievement, but with the great, deep way of apprehending Life and the world.
From youth to age, with art delightful and supreme, Rembrandt expressed himself in Etching. One of his first prints—the subject known to many by Wilson’s title of it, ‘Head of a Woman lightly etched’—is the earliest of his known portraits of his mother; and that shows already mastery of character and mastery of line, as the lady, with the pardonable vanity of the handsome, the pardonable self-appreciation of one who was scarcely less a woman of the world because she wasbourgeoiseby station, smiles her sagacious, kindly, genial smile, and lives with Whistler’s ‘Portrait of his Mother,’ with Holbein’s ‘Erasmus,’ with Latour’s pastels thatglow sober yet vivid on the walls of the Museum of Saint-Quentin. It is a sketch, and consummate. His very last print—so it is generally accepted—is that ‘Woman with the Arrow’ which, unless the place be given to the print often called ‘Négresse couchée,’ is the most tolerable of his nudities. It is not faultless in draughtsmanship; or, if it is faultless in draughtsmanship, then how deficient was the model in perfection of form! But, in a fine impression—and in Etching, if the impression be not fine, the work does not exist—how alive is the figure! The flesh, how supple! The pose—the grace of the faulty. The light, how glowing, and the shade, how velvety! You forgive—it may be rather that you scarcely notice—the inexplicable mixture of realism with the classic. The side of a bed, the young thing sitting on it: Degas might have conceived the figure thus. But it is not pure realism, for she holds an arrow—suggests some light allegory, as much, save for her imperfections, as some nudity of Titian’s or Tintoret’s—just that touch of the Classic, that one remove from the actual, Rembrandt’s tribute to an art inspired by higher thought, by fancy more elegant, than any that it was the privilege, generally, of the art of Amsterdam to show.
Between that early etching, the first of his mother’sportraits, and this final one, his last record of the body, to which he has imparted a slimmer charm than the charm that belonged unquestionably to Hendrickje Stoffels, the young and sympathetic companion of his later years—recorded, opulent and somewhat sensuous, in the great Edinburgh picture,—the range of Rembrandt, in about three hundred prints, is almost inconceivably great. Several of his plates, and these not really the least attractive, are, like the rare sheet of studies, with the portrait of Rembrandt himself (No. 82 in the catalogue of Mr. Middleton-Wake), so to put it, thumb-nail sketches as he passed upon his way and was struck and interested by this or that countenance, this or that gesture. Many deal with Sacred Subjects, and invariably with a directness, a homeliness, one might say almost, that is his alone. It would have been impossible so to have conceived the incidents of Bible Story if Rembrandt had not so profoundly believed in them. The conventional and perfunctory are altogether banished. And though, for reasons that the present place would not perhaps be quite the fittest for dwelling on, the Sacred Subjects of this great Dutch master do not attract or charm as the portraits and the landscapes do, there is yet in them a world of material for serious study: in theminvention and imagination enrich a treatment fortified already by closeness of observation. His mind is stored; his spirit is devout. In the ‘Death of the Virgin’ he takes advantage of tradition—gives us therefore not only St. Joseph moved at his loss, St. Luke with hand on wrist as feeling the pulse of the dying, but (as Mr. Middleton-Wake reminds us) a company of Apostles, brought miraculously, legend says, from distant missions; and, above, are angels and cherubim. A religious composition better known to the public, is the ‘Christ healing the Sick,’ or, as it is called often, ‘The Hundred-Guilder Print.’ It got that latter name because, during that portion of his life in which Rembrandt was popular, the then substantial sum of a hundred guilders was wont to be obtained for it, when, out of Rembrandt’s studio, an impression of it was sold. Its intense reality and homely pathos—the qualities in it which have influenced, so greatly, later and now living etchers, like Legros and William Strang—gave it immediate value. And since those days a fine impression has always had its price, though it should be said here that the difference in money value, established more particularly in our own generation, between a fine impression of the most rare ‘First State’ of this plate and the less rare butoften as desirable ‘Second,’ is a fantastic difference, dependent only upon relative difficulty of acquisition. Thank goodness, even now a twenty-pound note will buy sometimes a most desirable Rembrandt etching. A couple of hundred guineas is required to buy a fine impression of the Second State of the ‘Hundred Guilder’; and of a First State, could it come into the market, there is every reason for knowing that two thousand pounds would be about the ransom.
In various branches of his practice, Rembrandt’s fame is about equally dependent on picture, drawing, and original print; but I take leave to ask the reader to impress upon his mind that in one branch, the branch of Landscape, that is not so at all. Lord Lansdowne’s ‘Mill,’ a famous landscape at Cassel, and a few other landscapes scattered about collections private and public, could not, however undeniable their art and however complete their charm, secure for Rembrandt that exalted place amongst the makers of Landscape which the drawings give, and which is given yet more by the etchings. It may be asked, naturally enough, ‘Why were Rembrandt’s painted landscapes so few—his mastery being so great?’ The answer is, that like our own Gainsborough’s, a century later, they were painted,most of them, for his own personal delight. The painted landscape of Rembrandt could not have been warmly appreciated by a generation that made difficult the life of Hobbema, and that extended welcome less to Wynants and De Koninck than to the Dutchmen who had become Italianised in theme and treatment. How, then, about the drawings and the etchings? Well, the truth is, with these it mattered little. The drawings were generally masterly brief studies. In the case of the etchings even, hours, not weeks, for the most part—a day and not a month—had been bestowed on the performance. For Rembrandt, with at least some other sources of income, it was enough to have had the delight of execution; and then, here and there a friend—the Burgomaster Six perhaps, or Uytenbogaert, the Receiver-General to the States of Holland—would want an impression or so. There was the little sketch ‘Six’s Bridge’—a decisive, plain-sailing, by no means particularly picturesque record of the wooden way whose name is associated with Rembrandt’s lifelong friend. There is the ‘Goldweigher’s Field’—his estate, rather: the estate of Uytenbogaert, lying a few miles from Amsterdam; its pavilion and ornamental water, the surrounding lands, the modest, heathy uplands, the trees andtowers, a bird’s-eye view, a very panorama of slightly undulating plain that stretches to the Zuyder Zee. Of Rembrandt’s etched landscapes—which are rare generally—this is one of the rarer, one of the more important. Art like that does not captivate at just the first glance at it; but, with knowledge, comes a deep appreciation of the vision and the chronicle.
Two other landscapes I should wish to name as at least the equals of this one, and both of them, it may be, are easier to receive, easier for the little-trained eye to enjoy promptly. One is the ‘Large Landscape with a Cottage and Dutch Hay-barn’; the other is the ‘Landscape with a Ruined Tower.’ The first is a record of sunshine; the second, of the more dramatic weather that threatens storm. The first is the more intricate. Little in keeping with the fashions of our moment, in the art of landscape, is it to present within the limits of a single composition a view so varied and so elaborately wrought. But Rembrandt, even more than Turner, could achieve without any loss of unity of impression the presentation or suggestion of every fact of the scene; and the piece remains ‘modern,’ though a Classic. The ‘Landscape with a Ruined Tower’—broad, decisive, concentrated—is, in a sense, an anticipation of the method of Constable: the interestlying less in formal elegance of line or placid light than in the strong realisation of the forces of Nature—a vivid broad illumination and an ominous shadow, and the expression of these exalting somehow the features of an everyday land, as emotion transfigures a face. The ‘tower,’ the close observer may inform me—thinking of the title—is not ‘ruined’; for here is its domed roof. Yes, but the domed roof is in the First State only, and that is so rare that it is doubtful if it had ever been examined by the cataloguer who bestowed upon the etching the name by which it is still known.
Although the etched Landscape of Rembrandt, in its singular union of simplicity and learning, in the close, uncustomary alliance of Style with personal impression, stands well-nigh alone, and suffices as the basis of a reputation as great as Titian’s, Claude’s, or Poussin’s—and one which now, with only slight and temporary declension, has endured for two hundred years—we have yet to give consideration to his triumph in that branch of Art with which, in the mind of the average educated person, he is more generally identified—I mean Portraiture: which means to some the taking of superficial likeness, and to some the revelation of character.
For this reason and that, every industrious and thoughtful, as well as every careless, student of pictorial Art, has his own favourites in Portraiture: there is our pride in Reynolds, our joy in Gainsborough, our wonder at the magic of Velasquez, our steady confidence in truth when Holbein is the draughtsman, our grave and brooding satisfaction over the august portraiture of the Venetians. But Rembrandt unites men’s suffrages—carries with him even those who admire most warmly this painter’s unswerving veracity and that one’s fluent grace. And as one thinks what was the human material which furnished elements for the creations of Rembrandt—the old men and the women and the youths of Amsterdam—one thinks all the more, how exalted was the vision, and yet how firmly with his feet on earth stood the man to whom it was vouchsafed! Over and over again, the needle, as the brush, of Rembrandt, has been occupied with a face which had no beauty—at all events no formal beauty—that we should desire him. He has given it interest and dignity—dignity without a touch of the artificial or pretentious; the dignity of the individual soul in its best hours. He did this more or less at all times, but he did it more markedly in his later time than in his earlier; for, wonderful as was the completenessof Rembrandt’s art within its self-set limits in even his earliest time, he had, in common with most of the greatest of creative and critical intellects, that gift of long development, of steady progression. Rembrandt was no juvenile prodigy. As time passed, as experience gathered, as misfortunes saddened—at all events in certain lonely hours—the spirit of a man of whom upon the whole indeed it may be said, he
‘rose distinctAbove slave-sorrows, to his chariot linked,’
‘rose distinctAbove slave-sorrows, to his chariot linked,’
‘rose distinctAbove slave-sorrows, to his chariot linked,’
‘rose distinct
Above slave-sorrows, to his chariot linked,’
Rembrandt’s command of the instruments of his employment became only more complete, if also his method was more summary. More and more sonorous were the notes he uttered, and thevox humanastop, which is absent in colder craftsmen, sounded with increased frequency and more assured appeal.
Of course in Portraiture, though he succeeds always, he succeeds best when his themes are the best. With the exception of ‘Clément de Jonghe,’ with the exception of ‘Lutma,’ with the exception perhaps of ‘Jan Six’—etched by him many years before he wrought the noble painted portrait which is owned still by a descendant of its sitter (Mr. Six van Hillegom of Amsterdam)—Rembrandt ismost profoundly interesting, most penetrating, most sympathetic, when it is this or that member of his own family who serves as his model. Once or twice at least he portrayed the features of his son; several times those of his mother, whom in the ‘Mère de Rembrandt au voile noir’ he records in an hour of austere and guarded meditation, as in the ‘Head of a Woman lightly etched’ he records her in the relaxation of social ease. Many times, in drawing, print, and picture, he portrayed his wife, Saskia—in moods that seemed to vary with his own: now perched upon his knee, in the Dresden canvas of almost aggressive buoyancy and self-satisfaction; now demure and pretty, in a Berlin drawing; now radiant and almost stately in the ‘Great Jewish Bride,’ so it is said—though I find least witness of her here—now the healthy, blameless animal of Mrs. Joseph’s golden canvas; now the sick, worn woman, with vitality gone, eye dimmed, life surely ebbing, of the lovely and pathetic little etching which Sir Seymour Haden was, I think, the first to christen ‘The Dying Saskia.’
But oftener than he depicted any member of his family—and oftener much than he thought fit to give expression to the cordial youthful face and ample contours of Hendrickje Stoffels, the agreeableconsolation of his age—he had recourse to his own countenance. In the great series of what the Germans call ‘self-portraits’ we may trace the changes in his air from spirited youth to burdened years. To-day he is comely, clean, and fit. To-morrow, after a night of revelry, it may be—for from few human experiences did Rembrandt, any more than Goethe, stand aside—he is haggard and ‘to pieces.’ Then he is proud in cap and feather; he buckles on his sword. Or, aged a little, he paints himself in loose gown, palette in hand, it may be, and mahl-stick at his side. Then, heavy and stooping, baggy below the eyes, with mouth tender yet saddened, trouble has come upon him from all the ends of the earth. He totters, scarcely yet irresolute, but weighed down certainly by years and sorrows; his wife long gone; his fame obscured; his means narrow; and, save for the sustaining power of his art, and one hopes, at least, for the consolation of one deep affection, anxiety in all his hours. We will not leave him like this—though like this we find him in Lord Iveagh’s immortal picture, and in one or two representations of kindred character in Vienna and at St. Petersburg. We will leave him happy in his drawing. It is an etching of scarcely surpassable interest, existing in many ‘States’—a print to beavoided in the later, which are flat and expressionless; to be cherished in all the earlier, of which the first is rarest and most vigorous. See its slashing directness. With blow to left and blow to right, so to say it, on the copper, he hacks his way triumphantly and speedily to his goal. He is the master of all methods. Here, as in so much besides, he has been broad and rapid. In the ‘Burgomaster Six’—which has something of the quality of a mezzotint—how tender and how slow! In the ‘Clément de Jonghe’—the printseller of Amsterdam—how large yet subtle! He is the master of many an instrument. We can apply to him the phrase, and the implied eulogy, of Robert Browning—he ‘blows through brass,’ but he can ‘breathe through silver.’
(Pall Mall Magazine, December 1898.)