Rembrandt van Rijn Instructions

Dutch baroque artist, who ranks as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art. His full name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He possessed a profound understanding of human nature that was matched by a brilliant technique—not only in painting but in drawing and etching—and his work made an enormous impact on his contemporaries and influenced the style of many later artists. Perhaps no painter has ever equaled Rembrandt's chiaroscuro effects or his bold impasto.

Rembrandt's earliest pictures were painted at Leiden, from 1627 to 1631. Bode mentions about nine pictures as known to belong to these years, chiefly paintings of single figures, as "St Paul in Prison" and "St Jerome "; but now and then compositions of several, as "Samson in Prison" and "Presentation in the Temple." The prevailing tone of all these pictures is a greenish grey, the effect being somewhat cold and heavy. The gallery at Cassel gives us a typical example of his studies of the heads of old men, firm and hard in workmanship and full of detail, the effects of light and shade being carefully thought out. His work was now attracting the attention of lovers of art in the great city of Amsterdam; and, urged by their calls, he removed about 1631 to live and die there. At one bound he leaped into the position of the first portrait painter of the city, and received numerous commissions. During the early years of his residence there are at least forty known portraits from his hand, firm and solid in manner and staid in expression. It has been remarked that the fantasy in which he indulged through life was reserved only for the portraits of himself and his immediate connexions. The excellent painter Thomas de Keyser was then in the height of his power, and his influence is to be traced in some of Rembrandt's smaller portraits. Pupils also now flocked to his house in the Bloemgracht, among them Gerard Douw, who was nearly of his own age. The first important work executed by Rembrandt in Amsterdam is "Simeon in the Temple," of the Hague Museum, a fine early example of his treatment of light and shade and of his subtle colour. The concentrated light falls on the principal figure, while the background is full of mystery. The surface is smooth and enamel-like, and all the details are carefully wrought out, while the action of light on the mantle of Simeon shows how soon he had felt the magical effect of the play of colour. In the life-sized "Lesson in Anatomy " of 1632 we have the first of the great portrait subjects - Tulp the anatomist. the early friend of Rembrandt, discoursing to his seven associates, who are ranged with eager heads round the foreshortened body. The subject had been treated in former years by the Mierevelts, A. Pietersen and others, for the Hall of the Surgeons. But it was reserved for Rembrandt to make it a great picture by ...