The Mentor: Rembrandt, Vol. 4, Num. 20, Serial No. 120, December 1, 1916

REMBRANDT

By JOHN C. VAN DYKE

Professor of the History of Art, Rutgers College

MENTOR GRAVURES

SOBIESKI

DETAIL OF THE ANATOMY LESSON

THE MILL

MENTOR GRAVURES

ELIZABETH BAS

PORTRAIT OF SASKIA HOLDING A FLOWER

COPPENOL

Portrait of the Artist

By Himself

In the Collection of Mr. Henry C. Frick, New York City

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1916, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

The visitor to the Netherland art galleries should leave his notions of Greek and Italian art with his umbrella, at the entrance. Holland is no place to talk about canons of proportion or types of beauty or ideals of any kind. The Dutch are now, as they have always been, a people confronted by the realities of existence, and see life, literature, and art as facts rather than as fancies. There has never been much romance about them, but, on the contrary, a realization of the existent, a grasp of the truth and vitality of things, a keen penetration into the human problem. There never was any need for far-fetched fancies or ideals. The life about them interested and impressed them, and, from the very beginning, the Dutch painters were painting the portrait of their own land and people. The result was an art that has a distinct quality of its own – just as distinct a quality as the art of Persia or Japan. You would not think of judging Japanese art by that of Italy. Why then think of Dutch art in any other terms than its own?

Rembrandt and Raphael

PORTRAIT OF A MAN

Altman Collection of Metropolitan Museum, New York

To carry out the thought in illustration, it may be said that Rembrandt, the great Dutchman, was the very opposite of Raphael, the great Italian. He painted no allegories on Vatican walls, was not led away by Renaissance revivals of Greek form, dreamed no dreams of uniting pagan types with Christian ideals. Even technically he was widely different from Raphael. He painted the easel picture in oils, had no love whatever for Italian line and composition, did all his drawing and modeling by catches of shadow, and produced his most startling effects by the dramatic use of light and color. In all this Rembrandt was merely reflecting his time and his people in his own ingenious way. He was emphatically true to the Dutch point of view, and today his art is full of truth, force, vitality, character. In fact, that word “character” is the keynote to all his work. It furthermore explains that æsthetic paradox, sometimes applied to Rembrandt, “the beauty of the ugly.” For many of his people are ugly, if we regard them for the straightness of their foreheads and noses, the oval of their chins, or the proportions of their figures; but they are beautiful in their simplicity of presence, their unconscious sincerity, their profound truth of character.

THE ARCHITECT

In the Gallery at Cassel, Germany

Rembrandt as a Leader

No country in Europe produced a finer quality of art, or a more learned school of craftsmen, than Holland. There was a master genius there as elsewhere, and that genius was Rembrandt. He came when Holland had reached her highest pitch of power – came on the crest of the wave of which he and his fellow painters were the light and color. He has been acclaimed as her great painter and he deserves that title, for of all the Dutch masters he was practically the only one who was universal in his scope. His art alone, in its appeal, travels beyond the confines of the Netherlands. What he has to say is world-embracing, and finds sympathetic response with all peoples. He is profound in his humanity, in his penetration into life problems, in his sympathy with his fellow man. The poor, mean-looking Amsterdam Jews that he portrayed in so many of his pictures are pathetic in their humility, their suffering, their patience. He was always taking for models the humble, the despised, the lowly. His heart seemed to go out to them.

His Biblical Pictures

And with such types what a new interpretation he gave the Bible! How he realized Bible truth and brought it home to his own people by using the Jew of the quarter and the boor of the polder for models! Look at the “Supper at Emmaus” – look for the intensity of the types rather than for any regularity of form. What pathos in the pale, blue-lipped Christ, with the phosphorescent glimmer of the tomb about the architecture at the back! What amazement in the disciples at the table! What fear in the boy bringing in the dish! This was perhaps the first time in art that the “Supper at Emmaus” was made real and believable. The story was not only realized, but humanized. All of Rembrandt’s Biblical pictures were of this nature. Look again at the “Manoah’s Prayer,” or the “Tobit and the Angel,” or the “Sacrifice of Abraham.” They are Dutch types again, in Dutch costumes and surroundings. Rembrandt knew very well that the Biblical characters were not Dutch in type, and that the people in the time of Christ did not dress like the boors and burghers of Holland. He purposely painted his own people in their native costumes, that he might the better and the more forcefully bring realization home to them. It was not, is not, affectation. Study the Manoah and his wife, the Abraham, the family of Tobit on the doorstep, and you cannot find in all art people of more unconscious sincerity. Rembrandt believed in them. And that is why you and I believe in them today.

Rembrandt as a Portrait Painter

JAN HERMANSZ KRUL

In the Gallery at Cassel, Germany

PORTRAIT OF JOHN SIX

In the Six Gallery, Amsterdam

WOMAN WITH PINK

In the Gallery at Cassel, Germany

Rembrandt painted many Biblical pictures, which are at present widely scattered throughout the European galleries. In all of them he gave a new interpretation, a profound insight, a real meaning, to Scriptural story. In addition he painted many figure compositions of a historical or mythological cast. But his great success, after all said and done, was with the portrait. His technical methods were well suited to the portrait, and he was unsurpassed in giving the truth of presence in his sitter. The quiet dignity of his Dutch burghers, their repose and simplicity, the complete absence of anything like pretense about them, made up Rembrandt’s point of view; but to this he added a cunning hand and a technical skill that were wonderful. How superbly with his catches of light and shade he could draw an eye, a forehead, a nose, a chin! How instantly and inevitably he caught the salient feature and turned it by sharp emphasis into positive expression! What significance he could get out of an outstretched hand, a bent back, a bowed head! These were features wherewith he proclaimed the character of his sitter. The “Portrait of an Old Lady,” in the National Gallery, London, has the flabby cheek, the trembling lip, the wrinkled brow of the aged; but you can also see that hers has been a life of suffering, and that the eyes have often been blinded with tears. On the contrary, the “Portrait of a Man” – the so-called Sobieski, at Petrograd, has the determination and force of the warrior. It has grip and firmness and courage about it. These are not only in the features, but Rembrandt has even put them in the brush work – the manner of handling. Again, by way of contrast, the heads in the “Lesson in Anatomy” are put in calmly, serenely, inevitably just right. What intelligence, seriousness, and living presence they have! They are what might be called speaking likenesses, in the sense that all they lack of life is speech. And what can one say that will adequately describe the loveliness of mood, the eternal womanly, in the “Portrait of Saskia,” at Cassel! It is a wonder as a piece of color, but still more wonderful as a characterization of the painter’s wife. Once more, for a further contrast, look at the “Portrait of Coppenol.” He is supposed to be a writing master because he is sharpening a quill pen, but whatever his profession or pursuit, have you any difficulty in seeing here a dull-witted person of very limited intelligence? The very fatness of the forehead, so remarkable in its realistic rendering, the narrow eyes, with their vacant stare, the pumpkin cheeks and head, the soft, lazy hands, seem to point to some clerk or pedagogue, who had not enough brains to know that he wanted more.

Rembrandt was easily one of the great group of portrait painters with Titian, Velasquez, and Holbein. And by this I mean no faint praise. It seems to be thought in some quarters that portraiture is somehow an inferior branch of painting. It is said to require no invention or imagination. But nothing could be more mistaken than such an idea. When we speak of Rembrandt, Titian, Velasquez, and Holbein we are speaking of the world’s great masters, and perhaps their most satisfactory masterpieces are their portraits. A painter who can adequately portray his fellow man, as Rembrandt did, has practically said the last word in art. That Rembrandt had this gift and accomplishment is evidenced by the high esteem in which his work is held by painters even to this day.