Rembrandt   By: Jozef Israëls (1824-1911)

EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE

In the Same Series

Artist. Author. VELAZQUEZ. S. L. Bensusan. REYNOLDS. S. L. Bensusan. TURNER. C. Lewis Hind. ROMNEY. C. Lewis Hind. GREUZE. Alys Eyke Macklin. BOTTICELLI. Henry B. Binns. ROSSETTI. Lucien Pissarro. BELLINI. George Hay. FRA ANGELICO. James Mason. LEIGHTON. A. Lys Baldry. REMBRANDT. Josef Israels. WATTS. W. Loftus Hare. TITIAN. S. L. Bensusan. RAPHAEL. Paul G. Konody.

Others in Preparation.

[Illustration: PLATE 1. SUZANNA VAN COLLEN

This portrait, painted about 1633, and one of the gems of the Wallace Collection, presents Susanna van Collen, wife of Jan Pellicorne, and her daughter.]

REMBRANDT

BY JOSEF ISRAELS

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

The plates are printed by Bemrose Dalziel, Ltd., Watford

The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate I. Suzanna Van Collen Frontispiece From the Wallace Collection

Page II. A Portrait of Saskia 14 In the Brera, Milan

III. Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild 24 In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam

IV. Portrait of an Old Man 34 In the Pitti Palace at Florence

V. The Company of Francis Banning Cocq 40 In the Royal Museum at Amsterdam

VI. Portrait of a Young Man 50 In the Pitti Palace at Florence

VII. Portrait of an Old Lady 60 From the National Gallery, London

VIII. Head of a Young Man 70 In the Louvre

INTRODUCTION

While the world pays respectful tribute to Rembrandt the artist, it has been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small measure of reliable information concerning Rembrandt the man. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little concerned with personalities. A man was judged by his work which appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever increasing circle. There were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life. Sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip, quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes as Rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the details of their sojourn unrecorded.

Rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to have been a light hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much. Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said about him. It was only when the superlative quality of his art was recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather up such fragments of biography as they could find.