Read Ebook: Rembrandt by Isra Ls Jozef

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Ebook has 157 lines and 11627 words, and 4 pages

Craig rose as Jamison stood up negligently. Craig looked like a wreck. His face was a sickly white and his eyes burned from cavernous depths. His lips were trembling a little.

"They're going to suspect me!" he said desperately. "Only one man beside myself knew I had those bonds. They're gone--stolen. Man, you've got to clear me! Search me, search the room! Put me under arrest. Do something!"

"I'll put you under surveillance," said Jamison, "if you like." He yawned. "Just to prove to your firm you didn't hide out on 'em. I'll send a man up in a little while."

"I can give an account of every movement since I've been in the city," said Craig suddenly. "Look here. I keep an account of all my expenditures. You can check me up. Here's my dinner. Here's the tip, and a postage-stamp on the letter to my firm. Here's a magazine I bought.... You can check up the time on every one of them. You can trace my movements that way."

Jamison glanced uninterestedly at the open page held in Craig's shaking hand.

"Don't get so excited," he said grouchily. "Don't y' know that if you had swiped the stuff you'd have faked a book like that?"

He eyed the page for a moment and sat down again, as if a new chain of questioning had occurred to him.

"Say, do you often come through here?" he inquired.

"Yes, on an average of once a month."

"Stop at this hotel?"

"Yes...." Craig began to look hopeful. "Do you suppose some one of the help--"

"How big a package were the bonds?"

"There were eighty of them. They'd make quite a wad of paper."

"Make a man's pocket bulge out?"

"Surely."

"The hotel-clerk kept all the employees waiting," observed Jamison. "I'll take a look. Was your place much messed up when you got back?"

"Practically like this. I left the bonds in my suit-case. When I opened the door I saw the place was torn upside down, everything thrown all about."

"You'd left your suit-case open?" queried Jamison. "They'd look in there first...."

"The bonds were under a shirt--in the folds of a shirt. At first glance they wouldn't seem to be there."

Jamison puffed thoughtfully for a moment.

"Ever use your firm's stationery here?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Just thinking," said Jamison. "You see, if you dropped a letter-head in a waste-basket, whoever cleaned up the room might connect you up.... Say, your firm is a bank. You come through every so often. Suppose you leave a letter-head. Banks sometimes send currency from one place to another by messenger. A chambermaid or bell-hop might notice...."

Craig's face brightened. Jamison wore an air of innocent pride.

"You have to think of those things," he said modestly. "I'll tell you. You go down and get the desk-clerk and a cop. Tell the desk-clerk to have the darkies that clean up this floor come in, one by one. Come back with the clerk and the cop."

Craig obediently started for the door, hesitated, glanced back, and then went out. Jamison allowed himself the luxury of a grunt when the door closed, and the expression of innocent pride vanished utterly from his features, leaving them somewhat bored and entirely disgusted.

"Sloppy work," he commented gloomily, to himself. "I wonder where he keeps his shaving-soap. That's the answer, ten to one."

He began to rummage in Craig's suit-case.

When Craig pushed open the door again with the room-clerk and the policeman, Jamison was standing by the bureau, where there was a light. He seemed to be examining something in his hand. Craig looked vastly more hopeful, though his face was still a deadly w He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he was equally full of affection for Saskia, whose hope of raising children seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little Rombertus, two daughters, each named Cornelia, had died soon after birth. In 1640 Rembrandt's mother died. Her picture remains on record with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the biographers of the artist do not suggest that Rembrandt was anything but a good son. A year later the well-beloved Saskia gave birth to the one child who survived the early years, the boy Titus. Then her health failed, and in 1642 she died, after eight years of married life that would seem to have been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous "Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose the picture!

It may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this fine work, Rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. He was then somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward, his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of disappointment, pain, and care. Perhaps it would have been no bad thing for him if he could have gone with Saskia into the outer darkness. The world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not redeem.

Saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left to Rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child Titus, but Rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble about the legal side of the question. He did not even make an inventory of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. Perhaps the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. It may be that the war with Spain was beginning to make people in comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. His passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the rank and file of Amsterdam's comfortable classes. To be sure, the Stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous "Circumcision" and the "Adoration of the Shepherds." Pupils continued to arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond Holland; but the public stayed away.

Rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could, and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. Money ran through his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale of distress.

Between 1642, when Saskia died, and 1649, it is not easy to follow the progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. His connection with Hendrickje Stoffels would seem to have started about 1649, and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the painter's mistress. Some have endeavoured to prove, without any evidence, that he married her, but this concession to Mrs. Grundy seems a little beside the mark. The relations between the pair were a matter for their own consideration, and it is clear that Hendrickje came to the painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of thirty-six.

She bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously enough, her position in the house was accepted by young Titus Rembrandt, who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her, to deal in pictures and works of art--a not very successful attempt to support the establishment in comfort.

In the year when Hendrickje joined Rembrandt, he could no longer pay instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the Joden Breestraat. About the following year he began to sell property, hoping against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. Three years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. In 1656 a fresh guardian was appointed for Titus, to whom his father transferred some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. The year 1657 saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no more than 5000 florins. A year later his store of pictures came under the hammer, and in 1660, Hendrickje and Titus started their plucky attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore some small part of the family fortune.

For a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned. One of Rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," and this is one of the last works of importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to fail. To understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he produced between 1628 and 1661. The drawings may be disregarded in this connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. When he was passing from middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer.

One might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with Rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. One year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the faithful Hendrickje died. A portrait of her, one of the last of the master's works, may be seen in Berlin. The face is a charming and sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that makes the mere question of the Church's participation in her relations with Rembrandt a very small affair indeed.

In the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the great silence. A few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as they might. With failing sight and health he moved to the Lauriergracht, and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. The lawyers made merry with the various suits. Some had been instituted to recover money that the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the creditors' right to Saskia's estate. In 1665 Titus received the balance that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound.

In the summer of 1668, when he was about twenty-seven years old, Titus married his cousin Magdellena, and this little celebration may be supposed to have cheered the elder Rembrandt a little, but his pleasure was brief, for the young bridegroom died in September of the same year, and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born.

There is no doubt that many of Rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted; but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. His pictures may be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed, too, among private galleries. Rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all countries. We know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in Holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time, that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. Now, in the years when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of Velazquez and Titian.

REMBRANDT

AN APPRECIATION OF THE PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

Will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees, heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often?

I feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different toasts, I will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight in the festive gathering. I touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and I speak as my heart prompts me. It is not very important or interesting, but I am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given.

In this frame of mind I am contributing my little share to the pile of written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of the great painter.

Many years ago I went to Amsterdam as an art student, to be trained under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter Kruseman. Very soon I was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the time.

The pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely.

When, however, I expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these portraits, the master refused my request. "No," he said; "if you want to copy, go to the museum in the 'Trippenhuis.'"

I dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me. Having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book to me. I failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. To my untrained eyes the exhibition in "Arti" seemed infinitely more beautiful; and Pieneman, Gallait, Calame, and Koekoek especially excited my admiration.

I was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my fellow-students, but I had not yet gained the experience and practice, which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but highly artistic qualities of the old Dutch masters. I maintain that however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old Dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it. In order to be able to sound the real character and depth of manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and developed.

It was long before I could summon up sufficient courage to enter this Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness.

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