It is not until we come to the Seventeenth Century that Painting in that part of the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands now known as Holland took on the national character of the Dutch race. The new political and economic views inculcated by the States-General, and even more particularly through the bias of the Protestant faith, produced an entirely new kind of painting. The sacred subjects inspired by the Roman Catholic religion, as well as the mythological and historical subjects (made so popular by Rubens) were rejected for more prosaic and literal interpretations of Biblical stories; for representations of popular heroes in the late wars that overthrew Spanish tyranny; for portrait groups of civic dignitaries, such as Regents and Presidents of guild-halls, shooting-galleries, hospitals and other charitable institutions (known as “Regent” and “Doelen” pictures); and for those domestic scenes and social parties called “Conversation Pieces,” in which are mirrored the Dutch home and its simple pleasures with detailed representation of furniture, rugs, china, glass, brass-ware, musical instruments, birds, animals, food, fruit, and flowers. Landscapes and marines were also in harmony with the new choice of subject, and, of course, portraiture of the most realistic kind.

This matter-of-fact art was given a somewhat “romantic” quality by the extraordinary treatment of dark masses of shadow and of sunlight effects and also by a fine use of color. Artists have always appreciated these characteristics, agreeing with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who wrote after his visit to the Netherlands:

“A market-woman with a hare in her hand, a man blowing a trumpet, or a boy blowing bubbles, a view of the inside or outside of a church, are the subjects of some of their most valuable pictures; but there is still entertainment, even in such pictures—however uninteresting their subjects, there is some pleasure in the contemplation of the imitation. But to a painter they afford likewise instruction in his profession; here he may learn the art of coloring and composition, a skillful management of light and shade and indeed all the mechanical parts of the art as well as in any other School whatever.

“The same skill which is practised by Rubens and Titian in their large works is here exhibited, though on a smaller scale. Painters should go to the Dutch School to learn the art of painting as they would go to a grammar-school to learn languages. They must go to Italy to learn the higher branches of knowledge.”

In the long list of great and noteworthy Dutch painters the two greatest names are Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), a powerful giant, excelling in painting, etching, and drawing, producing masterpiece after masterpiece and standing alone as an interpreter of Bible stories, profound searcher for character in portraiture, and dramatist in light and shade (see page 204).

Frans Hals (1580?–1666), painter of portraits, corporations and military companies, and characters of low life, with an uncanny analysis of the eye and an uncanny technique to register surely and rapidly what his eye saw, whose pictures, long neglected, are of high value to-day (see page 220).

Not far below Frans Hals and Rembrandt as a painter of great civic group pictures comes Bartholomew van der Helst (1612–1670), whose enormous Civic Guard Banquet, painted in 1648 in celebration of the Peace of Münster, with its twenty-four life-size portraits, ranks as one of the great pictures of the world. Van der Helst’s Company of Captain Roelof Bicker, in the same gallery, with its thirty-two portraits, is its equal although not quite so renowned.

Dutch Painting, however, did not leap into being with Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Bartholomew van der Helst. There were Dutch Primitives, as there were Flemish Primitives, and they are not always to be distinguished from one another. The famous Hubert and Jan van Eyck, for instance, are thought to have been natives of Maaseyck on the Maas and Hans Memling is supposed to have been born in Memelynck, near Alkmaar.

The greatest of the Dutch painters was Lucas van Leiden (1494–1533), who knew Italian Art well and who was a follower of Albrecht Dürer. Some of his paintings are very decorative and his chess and card-players may almost be said to begin Dutch genre painting, brought to such perfection by the Little Dutch Masters. By the end of the Fifteenth Century a great many Dutch painters had visited Italy; some of them had studied there; and some of them had worked there. Jan van Scorel (1495–1562), for instance, was kept in Rome for five years by Pope Adrian VI, who was, himself, a native of Utrecht.

Jan van Scorel was the master of Antonio Moro, or Antonis Mor (1512–1577), who went to Rome, was admitted to the Guild of Painters in Utrecht in 1547, and leaped into fame with a portrait of Cardinal Granvella, who took Moro in his train to Brussels. Moro soon became Court-Painter to the House of Hapsburg and travelled about to various courts, painting portraits of Royalty. Michiel Jansz Mierevelt (1567–1641), was portrait-painter to the House of Orange and Nassau and his pupil, Paulus Moreelse (1571–1638), a native of Utrecht, was hardly less popular. The greatest painter of Corporation Pictures before Frans Hals was Jan van Ravensteyn (1572–1657).

The early Dutch landscape-painters travelled to Italy, Switzerland, and even Norway; but none of them acquired the reputation of two Dutchmen who found inspiration at home. Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), and Jan Wynants (1620?–1682), were the first to take pleasure in their own country. Van Goyen loved the water, the boats, the clouds, the mist, and distant towns silhouetted against the sky. Wynants showed the charm of the lonely walk that led through the dunes to the sea. Wynants formed Adriaen van de Velde (1635–1672), who carried landscape-painting so far that he comes very close to the Barbizon School of the Nineteenth Century. Then there are two Dutch artists who are doubly famous for their landscapes and animals: Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691), “the King of Dutch landscape-painters,” noted for his golden light and elegant cavaliers riding fine horses; and Paul Potter (1625–1654), known far and wide for his Bull, in the Hague Gallery, painted when the artist was only twenty-two; but not so fine a work as La Vache qui se mire (The Mirrored Cow) in the same gallery. Of these two pictures the French critic, Burger, wittily remarked: “La Vache qui se mire is a chef-d’œuvre and not a hors d’œuvre, like the Bull!” Supreme as landscape-painters stand Jacob Ruisdael (1628–9–1682), who used as a rule a very dark green and who was able to suggest immense perspectives in very small compass, also for his harmonious relation of earth and sky, and Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709), supposed to have been his pupil, and whose long neglected pictures of long, straight roads beneath tall trees now bring high prices.

Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), a pupil of Frans Hals, wandered about the country finding material along the roads. Ostade often caught the poetic side of a rustic scene and he had a commanding knowledge of light.

The Dutch, with their love of home and their simple pleasures, excelled in depicting scenes of intimate life, “Conversation Pieces,” and genre. The list of these worthy painters is long. A few, however, stand out prominently,—Gerard Dou, Gerard Terborch, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hoogh, Jan Vermeer of Delft, Gabriel Metsu, Nicholas Maes, and Frans van Mieris—all painters of the Seventeenth Century, portraying life as they saw it around them, according to the class in which they moved. Terborch, Metsu, and van Mieris showed ladies and gentlemen, beautifully dressed, enjoying music, or playing cards, or having a light afternoon repast, or writing letters, or making love, or talking in the garden, or sitting quietly in a comfortably furnished room; Jan Steen depicted feasts, merry-making, weddings, St. Nicholas celebrations, tavern-scenes, drunken brawls and quack doctors; and Gerard Dou produced simple scenes in the home where servants are at work and mothers sit by the cradle, and sometimes scenes by candle-light with strange reflections, for Gerard Dou was a pupil of Rembrandt and liked to play tricks with chiaroscuro. Another painter, who was a magician with light, is Jan Vermeer of Delft (1632–1675), who was a pupil of Rembrandt’s pupil, Carel Fabritius, and whose pictures are rare and famous (see page 228). Still another artist, remarkable for his knowledge of the complex problems of light, is Pieter de Hoogh or Hooch (1629–1677?), hardly less remarkable for his solid and splendid rendering of architecture, exterior as well as interior (see page 226).

Moreover, the Dutch excelled in two other genres,—birds and flowers. Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636–1695), caught all the beauties of the feathered world and had an insight into its society. The Floating Feather, in the Rijk’s Museum, is very celebrated. Burger delightfully wrote of it:

“No one has painted better than Hondecoeter the cocks and hens, ducks and drakes, and particularly little chicks and ducklings. He has understood such families as the Italians have the mystical Holy Family; he has expressed the motherhood of the hen as Raphael has the motherhood of the Madonna. In fact, the subject is more naturally treated because it has less sublimity. Hondecoeter gives us here a mother-hen who could face the Madonna of the Chair. She bends over with solicitude with outspread wings, beneath which peep the excited heads of the little chickens; while on her back is perched the privileged bambino—she does not dare move,—the good mother!”

Melchior d’Hondecoeter was taught by Jan Baptiste Weenix (1621?–1660), painter of dead game, and teacher of his son, Jan Weenix (1640–1719), who often arranged his dead game around the base of a large urn in a private park.

Of fruits and flowers—important subjects in Holland—come the two de Heems, father and son, Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), the first Dutchman to excel with fruit; Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), painter of flowers, fruits, bouquets with butterflies and moths fluttering about, old logs and tree stumps in the forest, and deserted birds’ nests. Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) “the Correggio of fruits and flowers,” was famed for his skill in depicting a transparent dewdrop trickling down a satiny petal; and Abraham Mignon (1640–1679), pupil of Jan Davidsz de Heem was a brilliant painter of flowers, fruits, butterflies, insects, and dewdrops.

With Cornelis Troost (1697–1750), called “the Dutch Hogarth,” because of his familiar scenes of comedy, the Decadence begins; and Dutch Painting ceased to be interesting until the middle of the Nineteenth Century.

THE STANDARD BEARER.

This picture, oils on canvas (55 × 45½ inches), has the distinction of having belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds and, after him, to the Earl of Warwick at Warwick Castle. It is signed on the left at the bottom, “Rembrandt fe 1654.” Consequently it was painted the same year as the famous Burgomaster Jan Six. The person has never been identified; but it is supposed that he was the standard-bearer of one of the Amsterdam Shooting Companies. The man is life-size, three-quarter length, with full light falling from the left foreground upon the whole figure. A grey wall with a rusticated pillar at the right forms the background from which the elderly Standard Bearer stands out boldly. He wears a dark-brown coat with gold buttons, a dark bluish green sash, and a rich gold-embroidered sword-belt crossing the chest from the right shoulder. A black hat with a large white plume covers his grey hair, but does not hide his face. In his gloved left hand he carries a red and yellow banner bearing the Arms of the City of Amsterdam and he holds a glove in his right hand. The picture is rich in color and fine in its illumination. From the Earl of Warwick it passed through the Collections of Mr. Charles Sedelmeyer of Paris, Mr. Charles J. Wertheimer of London, and Mr. George J. Gould of New York into that of its present owner.

Rembrandt van Rijn was born in Leiden in 1606, the son of a miller, who sent him to the Leiden University. Young Rembrandt, however, preferred painting and for three years studied under Jacob van Swanenburch, a Leiden painter, who had studied in Italy. Rembrandt had painted a good many pictures before he removed to Amsterdam at the age of twenty-three. He soon became famous in Amsterdam. From the year 1633 the face of a good-natured, buxom young woman, Saskia van Ulenburgh, daughter of a Friesland lawyer, appears on his canvases. In 1634 Rembrandt married Saskia; and Fortune smiled thereafter on everything he did. His orders made him rich and he had a splendid home, filled with collections of many kinds, including antique busts, costumes, curios, and paintings. At this period Rembrandt loved to dress Saskia and himself in fantastic array and paint gay and somewhat theatrical portraits of themselves.

Who does not know the famous picture of Saskia seated on Rembrandt’s knee in the Dresden Gallery, the artist clasping his wife’s waist with his left hand and brandishing in his right hand a long glass of sparkling wine, before them a table covered with an Oriental rug on which is a pastry surmounted by a peacock?

Not so familiar but more beautiful is the portrait in the Hermitage of Saskia dressed as a fanciful shepherdess with a mantle of pale green thrown over her white brocaded gown, in her hand a flower-twined crook, and on her head a heavy, thick wreath of ranunculus, anemones, iris, columbine, and striped red and white tulips. “Innocent and engaging in her brilliant draperies and gaily tinted flowers,” says Emile Michel, “she stands a graceful apparition, the light falling full upon her. Spring itself seems to be singing a paean of love and poetry from the master’s palette, at the dawn of that year which was to bring about the propitious union.”

Rembrandt’s life changed entirely after Saskia’s death in 1642, which, by the way, was the year he painted his most famous picture, The Night Watch (in the Rijks Museum), more properly called The Sortie of the Company of Captain Banning Cock.

Rembrandt became bankrupt in 1656 and his collections of antiques and paintings were sold for a mere 5000 florins! In the following year his house and collection of engravings came also to the hammer. Thenceforward Rembrandt lived with his son, Titus, in a modest dwelling in the Rozengracht, attended by his servant, Hendrickje Stoffels (his reputed wife) until the latter’s death in 1664. The close of Rembrandt’s life in 1669 found him poor, but as industrious as ever. Rembrandt is said to have painted about 550 pictures and to have made more than 250 etchings and 1500 drawings.

The Hague is the place to see the great works of Rembrandt’s early period, such as The Anatomy Lesson, the Presentation in the Temple or Simeon in the Temple, and several portraits of himself and others; and the Rijks Museum has the great productions of his middle and last period, including The Syndics and The Night Watch.

Apart from his individual and amazing portrayal of shadows and light effects, Rembrandt stands alone as the interpreter of the Bible story. In portraiture he is profoundly searching; and no one ever painted more forcible self-portraits than Rembrandt van Rijn.

Of all the qualities that Rembrandt possesses the most striking one is understanding of light and shadow. Fromentin very aptly defines this Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro in his Maîtres d’autrefois (Paris, 1876):

“To envelop and immerse everything in a bath of shadow; to plunge light itself into it only to withdraw it afterwards in order to make it appear more distant and radiant; to make dark waves revolve around illuminated centres, grading them, sounding them, thickening them; to make the obscurity nevertheless transparent, the half gloom easy to pierce, and, finally, to give a kind of permeability to the strongest colors that prevents their becoming blackness,—this is the prime condition and the difficulties of this very special art. It goes without saying that if any one ever excelled in this it was Rembrandt.”

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG OFFICER.

This picture signed lower right, “Rembrandt f. 1636” is painted on a panel, 20 × 25⅞ inches. It is one of Rembrandt’s finest and most pleasing portraits. With masterly skill the artist has painted the light in the eyes and the fine lines and texture of the lips.

The subject is supposed to be François Copal, the brother-in-law of Saskia van Ulenburgh, Rembrandt’s wife, and there is abundant evidence in support of the theory. Dr. Bode in his Rembrandt notes:

“There is a pair of portraits in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna, dated 1636, of a Young Officer with Thick Black Hair and His Wife, in costumes like those in which Rembrandt painted Saskia and himself. The young couple here represented was probably closely connected with the artist and his bride. The husband, whose features are regular, almost handsome, and who has a slight moustache wears a steel gorget and a small gaily-colored neck cloth over his finely plaited silk shirt, a greenish blue cloak hangs from his right shoulder, and his gloved hand rests on the hilt of his sword.

“Portraits of the artist himself and of his relations and friends, are nearly all executed with as much care as the numerous portraits of other persons painted to order at this time. Some few may have been presents to friends and relations; but the majority produced at this period (1633–1635), and that immediately following it were very probably commissions from friends and patrons of the master, the most renowned artist in Holland whose name was soon to be associated with those of the greatest painters in Europe. These pictures had a special attraction over and above their interest as portraits, by virtue of the highly individual costume and conception which add so much to their picturesque effect.”

Dr. W. R. Valentiner, also believing this to be a likeness of Saskia’s brother-in-law, says:

“The portrait of a cavalier, possibly François Copal, is one of the most imposing and impressive of the portraits which Rembrandt painted in the middle of the thirties, at the time when he was approaching the height of his fame as a portrait-painter at Amsterdam. Among the considerable number of portraits which the artist painted to order during these years, the present one (and a companion piece in the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna) stand out through the vivid, passionate expression and the personal touch which undoubtedly reflects the artist’s own mood. At no time Rembrandt expresses so much of a youthful, almost wild, temperament in his compositions, at no time he endeavors to give to them such an overpowering force and such an intense, almost sensuous feeling of life, as in these stormy years of his first successes at Amsterdam, which were accompanied by a happy marriage, by social connections, by acquiring riches and almost luxury.

“Something of young Samson, of whom the artist was so fond in these years, we feel also in the portrait of a handsome cavalier. We feel the lion’s force behind those glowing, piercing eyes, behind the energetic chin and cheek bones, and the exuberantly flowing, broad waves of the bushy, dark hair remind us of a lion’s mane.

“We easily recognize in Rembrandt’s work those portraits of which the sitters were strangers to him. The present one, in which he put so much of his own self, as he did only with friend’s portraits, does not belong to these. He has ornated the young cavalier with a costume which appealed to his imagination, the details of which we know from portraits of persons in his surroundings and self-portraits: the breast-plate, the colored scarf around the neck, the golden chain with medal-lion, the green velvet mantle with gold-embroidered border. On the companion-piece, on the other hand, the lady wears a costume and pieces of jewelry which we find also in Saskia’s portraits.

“Strange to say, the female figure itself has so much likeness to Saskia that we would be tempted to believe it to be a portrait of her, if there was not the portrait of the cavalier as the companion-picture preventing us from this supposition. But we know that Saskia had a sister, Titia, who visited the Rembrandt family frequently within these years (a portrait-sketch, a pen-drawing made of her in 1639 by Rembrandt is in the Stockholm Museum). She and her husband François Copal, were witnesses at the baptism of Saskia’s first children. We know also a portrait of François Copal’s brother, Antoni, in the Rothschild Collection, Vienna, which Rembrandt painted in 1635. The sitter of this portrait undoubtedly has a resemblance to the gentleman in our picture, almost as much as the companion-piece resembles Saskia. Is thus the theory too bold that the present portrait represents François Copal and the companion-piece at Vienna, Titia, his wife?”

The portrait came to the present owner, Mr. Erickson, directly from the famous Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna, purchased by Prince Liechtenstein from the Marchesa Incontri, Florence. Previously the picture had been in the Collections of the Comte Koucheleff Besborodko, Paris; the Duc de Choiseul Praslin, Paris (1793), and B. da Costa, The Hague (1752).

AN OLD LADY SEATED IN AN ARMCHAIR.

This splendid portrait, oils on canvas (42½ × 35½ inches), takes rank with Rembrandt’s famous study of Elizabeth Bas, widow of Admiral Swartenhout, in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam. It is three-quarters length, life-size, and signed on the left “Rembrandt F. 1643.” The subject is seated in an arm-chair of red leather with her head turned slightly to the left and she is looking in the same direction. She wears a black costume with a tightly fitting jacket lined with fur, a large flat, round, and gauffered ruff, and a flat, dark velvet cap. Her arms rest easily on the arms of the chair and in the right hand she is holding her eyeglasses, while the fingers of her left hand are placed between the leaves of a large book—presumably a Bible, with silver clasps and gilt edges,—a marvellous piece of still-life painting. The background is dark of the brownish Rembrandt tone and the light falls from the left upon the face of the sitter and upon her large ruff. Dr. Bode, in speaking of the lighting of this remarkable portrait, says: “A strong light falls on the broad, gauffered ruff and is reflected on the more softly illuminated face; another ray of light touches the hands with their small white cuffs. The dull red of the chair-back, the subdued glint of the gold edges and silver clasps of the book relieve the blackish tone of the picture almost imperceptibly. It takes a special place among Rembrandt’s portraits by reason of its peculiarly distinguished harmony. In arrangement and illumination it stands midway between the St. Petersburg Portrait of the Old Woman and the numerous studies of old women painted between 1650 and 1660.”

The picture was sold in Amsterdam in 1764 and has passed through the Collections of J. van der March, Amsterdam, 1773; M. Thelluson, Paris, 1777; an anonymous Parisian collection, 1788; M. C. A. de Calonne, London, 1795; Mr. J. Allmutt, London, 1863; and M. Louis Lebeuf de Montsgermont, Paris.

SIMEON AND MARY PRESENTING THE INFANT CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE.

This picture is interesting for two reasons. One, that it belonged to Horace Walpole and hung for many years in Strawberry Hill; and the other, that it is a recently discovered Rembrandt.

It would seem from the present documents that the picture is not many stages away from the painter’s studio. In a case like this, it is best to tell the story of the identification of this Strawberry Hill picture with the Rembrandt studio picture in the words of those most concerned in the matter.

But first let us read the interesting analysis written by the Rembrandt specialist, Dr. Jan Veth, author of the Life and Art of Rembrandt, published on the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of his birth. This essay is dated Amsterdam, August 2, 1916, when this picture from the Walpole Collection was discovered and sent to Holland.

Dr. Veth speaking:

“A rather large-sized picture, about 39½ × 31½ inches, has recently been imported from England, a picture which one recognized without any difficulty as being a late work by Rembrandt. This unknown work was at first thought to be in a rather dilapidated condition. Evidently long ago it had been relined by an unskilled hand, leaving the canvas badly wrinkled in places. These have been easily removed, the picture slightly restored and apart from a few local blemishes (nowhere occurring in the vital parts) the beautifully crackled and original coat of paint appears unimpaired. Many a museum piece giving the impression of being in a perfect state of preservation is, in reality, much less intact than this Rembrandt.

“The figure of Simeon in the picture reminds us to a certain extent of the figure of Homer in the Collection of Dr. Bredius, but the handling of the paint is more certain, the head firmer and more plastic. In his later period, where his old men bear so much of a resemblance to each other, it was not necessary that Rembrandt should always use the same models. The character, however, of this Simeon is akin to that of St. Matthew in the Louvre, to the father in the Prodigal Son in Petrograd, to the man behind Pilate in the picture in New York, Altman Collection, and to the Haman in the Collection of the King of Roumania.

“For the rest, the peculiar expression of Simeon’s rugged and full bearded countenance can be traced quite easily in that dark, majestic etching of the Presentation in the Temple with the exception that the head in the etching leans slightly more backward. Simeon’s expression depicts in a striking manner the decrepit old man to whom the divine revelation was made, and who, after walking into the Temple, seeing the Child and taking Him into his arms, said: ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people: A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people, Israel.’ Luke II, 29–32.

“The hermit-like old man wears a wide gold-colored leather mantle. Full of devotion he is holding the Christ Child, without touching Him with his long and stiffened hands.

“The little face appears foreshortened and recalls to one’s mind the strange drawing of the uplifted face of the young Jesus where he walks between his parents in that remarkable etching of the Return from the Temple. Close to Simeon and behind, stands Mary, the inclination of the head and attitude identical with the Virgin in the etching of the Presentation. Over her head she wears a wide, drooping hood, and the greater part of her face—a face of no ordinary maternity and with something of the grandeur so characteristic in Mantegna’s Madonnas—is deeply enveloped in shadows. In contrast with the bronze-like, warm color of the ancient man, she appears cool in tone, the neck only illuminated like enamel against the sombre purple of her frock.

“The group is composed without any additional accessory to distract or allure the spectator, being placed against a background deep and sombre, a great and connected whole. Throughout, the handling of the paint is full and direct without any small or useless accents, a great design treated like sculpture. The stronger colors of brown and red are dissolved in a sombre tone of bronze and with that singular mixture of smothered lights and cave-like half-tones and shadows which give the true expression of the quiet and pathetic event.

“Out of the whole tonality emerges first the powerful head of the old Seer, then the suppressed light of the strange Infant, and finally the beautiful sibyl-like Mary. The picture is full of that inner power of expression which Millet would have admired and Israels would have revelled in.

“In Holland we can point to more complete, perhaps more pompous and more brilliant, Rembrandts, but a picture by the master of such wonderful simplicity and at once of such great eloquence we hardly know of in this country.”

Turning to the Dutch records we learn the following:

“The desire to obtain the minutest detail of information about Rembrandt’s life and works, and perhaps with a wish to discover some allusion to his pictures, has led such men as Dr. Bredius to search among the old Dutch archives for records of ancient deeds in the registries of Amsterdam and near-by towns and villages. This has been no light task, for besides the numberless documents to be examined, the difficulties of deciphering the curious legal language used in the Seventeenth Century had to be combatted. Dr. Bredius’s efforts, however, were rewarded, when, about ten years ago he discovered an ancient deed relating directly to a painting by Rembrandt, and dated May 12, 1671 (two years after his death), signed before a notary named J. De Winter of Amsterdam. The document so unearthed threw light upon a picture entitled Simeon, of which no record had up to the time of Dr. Bredius’s discovery, been known. Dr. Bredius deemed the subject so interesting that he wrote an article dealing with The Last Year of Rembrandt’s Life, which appeared in Oud-Holland in 1909.”

Now we go to the number of Oud-Holland and take this extract.

Dr. Bredius speaking:

“Although we have learned much of the last years of Rembrandt’s life, of the very last and perhaps the saddest year of that rich life, we have learned little up to the present time. Only one work, that of his own portrait in the collection of Sir Audley Neeld in Griffleton House, seems to bear the date of 1669. We have no other picture and no etching, and in this portrait the master appears so feeble that we had begun to believe that Rembrandt worked but little in the last year of his life.

“That he was, however, still working and planned to do some etchings and also that there was a picture on his easel shortly before he died, is proven by an old deed I have recently discovered. Short as this may be, it nevertheless gives us much important information. Among other things it is new to us that Rembrandt was working up to the time of his death, and that Dirck van Cattenburch, a gentleman dealer with his brother, Otto, as far back as 1654, had business connections with Rembrandt. And here we see the aged master, as often happened and still happens with artists, more or less in the hands of the Art-dealer, who pays for the work before it is finished.

“Perhaps Rembrandt really considered his Simeon a finished picture, but the buyers probably did not, and looked upon his broadly painted canvases of his latest period as not being ‘entirely finished.’ We are not acquainted with any Simeon of his last period.[23] It is also interesting to note from the deed that the artist planned to make a series of etchings of the Passion, a subject which always attracted him and of which he made some of his most wonderful plates. Deed: May 12, 1671, Appeared before me, Allart van Everdingen, age about fifty years and Cornelius van Everdingen, age twenty-five years, both artists living in this town, and on request of Dirck van Cattenburch, do hereby declare that Allart van Everdingen, a few months before the death of Rembrandt van Rijn, artist, had a conversation as to the settling of a painting representing Simeon, painted by the aforesaid Rembrandt van Rijn, not yet entirely finished, owned by Dirck van Cattenburch and being in Rembrandt’s house.

“That he, witness, went to see and examine the aforesaid picture in the house of van Rijn, who told him at the time that the picture was owned by said Dirck van Cattenburch. The aforesaid Cornelius van Everdingen further declares that he went up to Rembrandt’s studio several times, where, on each occasion, he saw and examined the said picture, which was discussed by them, Rembrandt declaring that the picture was owned by Dirck van Cattenburch. Also that Rembrandt had several polished plates owned by Dirck van Cattenburch in order to engrave the Passion.

“It is interesting to note that Allart van Everdingen was a well-known painter of the time of Rembrandt and that he was born in 1612. He excelled in painting rocky landscapes. He also executed sea-pieces and storms with such surprising effect and spirit that his work entitled him to the appellation, the ‘Salvator Rosa of the North.’ Allart van Everdingen was also an etcher of repute and in this work there must have existed a bond of sympathy between Rembrandt and himself. He died in 1675, six years after the death of the master. His works are represented in all the great museums. Cornelius van Everdingen, his son, was also an artist, but not so universally known as his more brilliant father.”

Now then we turn to another Dutch authority to continue the story:

“Dr. Bredius, by the remarkable discovery of the ancient deed, had established the fact that a certain picture of Simeon (always identified in Art with The Presentation in the Temple) was in Rembrandt’s studio a few months before his death. But what had become of the picture there was nothing to show, none of the great biographers of the artist has ever classified a work of this subject dating from his last period.

“And now commence the most interesting events connected with the picture under consideration. Many inquiries were instituted. Dr. Bredius, from his rich stock of material bearing upon the master, searched exhaustively for some indication where the picture might be found. The known and unknown private and public collections of Europe and even America were examined through and through, until at last his efforts were rewarded and nine years after the discovery of the deed and his subsequent article, the picture was recognized and acclaimed as the lost Simeon.

“The painting was found in the collection of a nobleman in England, and although it had lain neglected for centuries there could be no possible doubt that it was the picture of Simeon referred to in the deed.

“This discovery occurred in the year 1916, at a time when the world was in the midst of the Great War; but such was the importance of the find that the masterpiece was sent at once to Holland, there to be admired by all of the great Rembrandt authorities.”

Critics have called attention to the fact that the first important picture painted by Rembrandt was Simeon in the Temple which is now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and which is also called Presentation in the Temple. It is a little strange that the last picture should have been on the same subject. Yet any one can see they are by the same hand. In the Hague picture it is beneath the high roof of a temple that the Virgin and St. Joseph make the offering and present the Holy Child to the Lord. Simeon, in a robe glittering with gold, holds the Holy Child and the High Priest stands in front of the group, his hands lifted in ecstasy. The latter’s robe of violet makes a beautiful note of color which is carried through the lights and shadows and which contrasts and harmonizes, too, with the Virgin’s dress of light blue. In the vaporous distance persons are seen ascending and descending the steps. All the light is concentrated on the central group and the cold, mysterious depths of the vast fane are expressed with marvellous skill.

Homer Reciting his Poems, also in the Hague Gallery, representing an old man in a yellow robe, has the face of the Strawberry Hill Simeon and Homer was painted in 1663. It could be possible that the same model was used for Homer and the Strawberry Hill Simeon.

How did Horace Walpole get this Rembrandt?

The information that we gain from the Catalogue of the Strawberry Hill Collection issued when Earl Waldegrave sold the contents of Strawberry Hill at Covent Garden in 1842 is rather tantalizing than otherwise.

The items read as follows.

On Page XVII of prefatory remarks:

“A Fine Rembrandt (No. 100) and a Nicholas Poussin adorn this end of the chamber. Page 204. The great North Bed Chamber: No. 100. The Presentation in the Temple, displaying all the power of light and shade so peculiar to this great master, Rembrandt.

“The above two pictures No. 99 and 100 were bought from a very old gentlewoman for whose grandfather they had been painted, and till then had never been taken out of their old black frames and are still in their pure and genuine state.”

Was the “very old gentlewoman” the grand-daughter of Dirck van Cattenburch?

PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER.

The subject, which we might almost call a Dutch Falstaff, is seated in a chair on the arm of which he rests his right elbow, while he seems to be grasping a stick with his hand. The left hand is hidden. Beneath his large grey felt hat with its wide turned-up brim a few locks of straggly grey hair are visible. His doublet is of grey silk with a dotted pattern (long anticipating the “Polka Dot” of the early Nineteenth Century), a surcoat of buff leather, and a broad, flat collar, trimmed with handsome and heavy lace, worn over a metal breast-plate. The Officer looks directly at us with a half-humorous, half-suspicious glance,—one of those characteristic Frans Hals’s expressions.

The picture, oils on canvas (32½ × 25¾) bears the monogram F. H. and the words “Ætat 55. A. 1637.” It was sold from the Collection of Mr. J. H. Töpfer in Amsterdam in 1841 and then it was in the Collection of Sir Edgar Vincent (Lord d’Abercorn) at Esher.

Frans Hals (1580?–1666), one of the greatest masters of painting, was born in Antwerp, where his parents (natives of Haarlem, and of good lineage), are supposed to have gone because of political disturbances of the time. It seems that Hals was settled in Haarlem before 1591, busily painting, and he lived there all the rest of his life. In 1637 he came under Rembrandt’s influence in Amsterdam. Hals’s life was rather disgraceful and went from bad to worse until poverty and comparative oblivion compelled him to accept charity. He died in Haarlem in 1666, leaving a great many followers. The real life of the man is to be found in such works as The Laughing Cavalier in the Wallace Collection and those vagabonds, lute-players, topers, and other rascals that belong to the same class as Autolycus, Launcelot Gobbo, Touchstone, Dogberry, Sir Toby Belch, Falstaff and our other much-prized, although disreputable, Shakespearian low-comedy characters.

Hals always accomplished his work by the greatest economy of means. A few broad, rapid, and unhesitating strokes, or swipes, of the brush, a dot here and there of light,—and that is all!

Everything that Hals painted shows his dazzling genius, his astounding instinct for striking effects, and his marvellous ability for catching a likeness. Hals never worked out his ideas: he left no sketches, nor studies. His extraordinary power of quick analysis with the eye and the gift his hand had for expressing what his eye had seen, combined with a rapid, sure, and skilled technique rank Hals as a master among masters.

Moreover, he had a keen and gay humor. No painter has ever been able like Hals to render the face in action and to fix forever, a rapid and fleeting expression on canvas. He loved to catch and make permanent a wink, a smile, a leer, or even hearty laughter.

Frans Hals was a genius at portraiture. Those who have seen the large number of Hals’s Doelen pictures in the Town Hall of Haarlem, each canvas containing from fourteen to twenty life-size portraits, stand aghast at the power represented in just this one phase of his art.

When we look upon these pictures we feel as if we were entering a hall full of convivial officers, laughing, jesting and making merry over their fine wines and choice food. They are richly dressed. Many of them wear lace cuffs and ruffs and bright scarves. Flags flutter, spears glitter, spurs and swords clink and rattle and flash in the sunlight; and plumes on the large hats nod in the breeze, or with the motions of these men’s bodies. Loud talk and bursts of laughter seem to issue from the frames. These convivial men have fought against the hated Spaniard and are ready “to trail a pike” again at any moment. A gallant and a jovial crowd,—these Arquebusiers of St. George and St. Andrew!

The artist was commanded to paint each man accurately and according to his rank in the Company; and Hals did more than fill his order,—he made each and every man live.

THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER.

Here is a half-figure of a young man seated, turning his head towards the spectator, and laughing merrily as he holds up a glass of wine in his right hand. His mandolin is lying on the table beside him and his left fingers close around its neck. He wears a dark cloak lined with blue and a large black cap thrown carelessly at the side of his head and his hair is unkempt and straggly. But what cares he? He has sung his song and played his tune and has been rewarded well,—well enough, indeed, to have a glass of good wine. So no wonder he laughs! Life is a joke anyway—“So here’s to the company and thank you, gentlemen!”