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

THE NIGHT WATCH

In the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam

A fine gravure reproduction of this painting appears in The Mentor, Number 17, “Dutch Masterpieces.”

His Technical Method

There was no trick about Rembrandt’s painting. He was no slave to a peculiar color, canvas or brush. He painted at times with a palette knife: at other times with his thumb. He kneaded the surface, ploughed through it when it was wet, did almost anything to get effects by catches of light and shade whereby he drew and modeled. But none of these small peculiarities explains his technical success. His methods were sound enough, and for the most part were known before his day; but he applied them better and increased their carrying power. He has been called the master of light and shade, and so, indeed, he was within a limited range. It was the same light and shade known to Leonardo, Giorgione, and Carravagio, and probably Rembrandt got it from pictures of the Neapolitan School, though he never was in Italy. But Rembrandt improved upon the Italian method of using shadow. He made it transparent, enveloping, mysterious. And its antithesis, light, he made penetrating and dramatic by putting it in sharp contrast. Out of the two he got wonderful effects. In doing the portrait head, for instance, he threw his highest light on the collar, the nose, the chin, the forehead. This high light ran off quickly into half-light and then into shadow, so that by the time the ear or side of the neck was reached, dark, even black, notes were used. The decrease was rapid; in fact often violent, but this only served to focus the attention more keenly upon the dominant features of the face. The result was what has been called “forced,” but it was very effective. It was the same effect that one sees today at the opera, when the chief actor is in the spot-light and the rest of the stage is in gloom.

SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH HALL

In the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam

A fine gravure reproduction of this painting appears in The Mentor, Number 8, “Pictures We Love to Live With.”

The Night Watch

But this violent focusing of light had its limitations even in Rembrandt’s hands. The “Night Watch” exemplifies them. This was to be a portrait group of the sixteen members of the Frans Banning Cock Shooting Company. The members wanted their portraits painted in a group, after the manner of the time, and Rembrandt conceived the idea of painting the portraits and making a stirring picture of the company coming out of its quarters, at one and the same time. It was an ambitious scheme, and not wholly successful, because here came in the limitations of his method. He painted sixteen portraits with his spot-light illumination, each one being completed under its own light. The picture lacked that one light which should have bound together the whole company. As a result there were sixteen separate portraits on the one canvas, held together in measure by shadow, color and atmosphere, but spotty in the lighting. The French writers of the eighteenth century could not understand the lighting, and were led to think the picture represented a night scene. They called it the “Ronde de Nuit,” and, later, Sir Joshua Reynolds translated this into “Night Watch.” But nothing is more certain than that Rembrandt intended it for a day scene in full sunlight. It was simply his arbitrary way of handling light that made a night effect out of daylight.

THE ANATOMY LESSON

In the Hague Museum

That is about the only criticism that can be lodged against the “Night Watch.” Light and color have both been sacrificed to shadow; but when that is conceded the picture still remains a marvel of color, shadow, and atmosphere, and a wonder of life and action. The movement – the bustle of it – is superb. The Captain and his Lieutenant in the foreground are in full light, but back of them and around them, emerging out of the gloom, are nebulous heads, flashing casques, plumes, halberds, guns, drums, dogs, street urchins – all the belongings of a militia company on parade. They are not only wonderful in their action, but in their mystery of appearance, coming out of shadow depths into light. Of course, the picture was not entirely satisfactory to the sixteen. They had bargained for their portraits, and little knew then how cheaply they were purchasing immortality. Those in the background complained that they were not sufficiently spot-lighted, not treated with sufficient importance; in fact, subordinated to those in the front row. But the picture, as a picture, is certainly successful, is a great favorite with all art-lovers, and in the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, where it now hangs, it is considered one of the world’s great masterpieces. Truer lighting – that is truer to the facts of general illumination – is seen in the earlier “Lesson in Anatomy” and the later “Syndics of the Cloth Hall,” but neither picture has the fascination nor the imagination of the “Night Watch.”

Rembrandt’s Styles

THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM

In the Old Pinacothek, Munich

THE ANGEL LEAVING TOBIT

In the Gallery of the Louvre, Paris

BLESSING OF JACOB

In the Gallery at Cassel, Germany

Rembrandt’s work is usually divided into three different periods. At first his method of handling was calm, measured, even at times smooth. His light and color were gray, as also his backgrounds. This period has been called his “gray period.” The “Lesson in Anatomy,” the “Sacrifice of Abraham,” the “Coppenol,” the “Elizabeth Bas,” the “Old Lady” of the National Gallery, London, all illustrate this early manner. It was gradually encroached upon and finally superseded by a fuller, freer handling of the brush, with much warmer color and light, tending toward reddish gold. This has been called his “golden period,” and marks the midday of his career. The beautiful “Saskia,” at Cassel, and the so-called “Sobieski,” at Petrograd, illustrate the beginning of this period – the changing from gray to warmer notes of red, yellow, and gold. The “Woman with the Pink,” at Cassel, the “Manoah’s Prayer,” at Dresden, the “Night Watch,” were done further along in this middle period. It was the time when Rembrandt was in his full strength, saw comprehensively, handled a full palette of color, and was almost infallibly accurate with his hand. In his third and last period Rembrandt’s work became rather hot and foxy in color, dark in illumination, kneaded and thumbed in the surface, and sometimes uncertain in drawing. He was expanding into a larger view and vision up to the last – seeing objects in their broader relations and proportions rather than in their surfaces. Toward the close he often slurred the surfaces, neglected textual qualities, and threw his whole force into the rendering of mass in relation to light, air, and color. The pictures of this period are hard for the beginner in art to understand, because he is misled by the roughness of the surfaces, the messy state of the pigments, the apparent fumbling, kneading, rubbing out and amending, of the brush work. But, as we have said, Rembrandt was purposely slurring surface truths for the greater truths of bulk, weight, and general relationship. The best example of this late work among our illustrations is the “Syndics of the Cloth Hall,” in the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. In it Rembrandt went back to his early method of lighting, but continued with his late manner of handling and coloring. It is superbly broad in vision, absolute in its truth to life, and convincing in its incident. The cloth merchants are seated about a table, perhaps figuring up their year’s balance, when someone opens the door to enter and they all look up to see the incomer. Nothing could be simpler, more direct, or truer. Rembrandt never painted anything better. For here he completely fulfilled expectations. Many of his later canvases he could not complete. The “Blessing of Jacob,” at Cassel, for instance, he probably gave up in despair, or was working upon at the time of his death. He had reached a pitch in his career when he saw and strove for things that his hand or brush could not realize or pin down to canvas. That is the great stone wall that even genius encounters and cannot surmount.