Great Masters in Painting: Rembrandt van Rijn Part 2

CHAPTER II

ART EDUCATION AND EARLY WORKS

The exact date of this first step on the road to fame is also still somewhat uncertain. Vosmaer believes it was in 1619, but the a.s.sertion of Orlers that when his parents allowed him to abandon the unloved Latin, they apprenticed him to a painter, is so precise, that it is unreasonable to suppose that his father should have returned to the attack. We may consequently a.s.sume that the final desertion of the Muses and enlistment in the cause of the Arts came after, not before, that enrolment at the University--that is to say, late in 1620 or perhaps early in 1621. Further facts go to prove this point. His first apprentices.h.i.+p, in accordance with the rules of the Guilds of Saint Luke, lasted three years, and came to an end therefore in 1623 or early in 1624. He then went to a second master in Amsterdam, but remained with him only six months; so that in either case the date of his leaving Amsterdam and returning to Leyden would have been some time in 1624. Now there is no doubt that it was in 1624 that this took place, and the only obvious conclusion is that his first apprentices.h.i.+p did not commence before 1620.

The painter who was then chosen for the honour of first guiding the hand of the young Rembrandt, by which honour he is nowadays almost alone distinguished, was Jacob van Swanenburch. A man of good position, the son of one painter, the brother of another, and of an engraver, he was not, judging by his only known picture, "A Papal Procession in the Piazza of St Peter," artistically speaking, of much account, and it was probably more for personal reasons, and because of his propinquity, than for his conspicuous talents that he was selected. He was able only to impart "the first elements and the principles" of his art to his young pupil, as Orlers tells us; but indeed these were all that were needed by one with such an overmastering personality, with so powerful an artistic inspiration and energy. So successful was the process that Orlers describes his advance in craftsmans.h.i.+p as so swift and steady that his fellow-citizens were completely astounded by it, and could already foresee the brilliant career to which he was destined. We must, however, remember in weighing this statement that it was written when that career was at its most brilliant stage, and is to some extent the proverbial safe prophecy of one who knows.

That Rembrandt did make considerable progress during the following three years is, of course, certain; and when his apprentices.h.i.+p drew to an end the question arose as to what was to come next. The experience of a young fellow-artist probably suggested the answer. About the time Rembrandt entered Swanenburch's studio Jan Lievensz, a fellow-citizen, a year younger than Rembrandt, who had, however, entered upon his artistic studies while Rembrandt was still struggling with, or against, the detested Latin, returned from completing his studies in the studio of Pieter Lastman at Amsterdam. The father of Jan was a farmer, a man in the same rank of life as Hermann the miller, and probably had business connections with him, so that the acquaintances.h.i.+p between the two sons, destined to ripen into warm friends.h.i.+p, doubtless began in early boyhood.

Certain it is, at any rate, that when Jan returned from Lastman's studio to astound his townsmen with his precocity, the intimacy between him and Rembrandt became close; in a few years their names seem to have become as inseparable as those of Damon and Pythias, and it was no doubt from the enthusiasm of Lievensz that the impulse arose which, in 1624, sent Rembrandt also to study under Lastman. The experiment, however, was not a success. Lievensz had remained with him two years; Rembrandt wearied of it in six months. And, truly, though he enjoyed at that time an incomprehensibly large measure of popularity and success, Lastman, though a far better artist than Swanenburch, was not one of those whose names we nowadays inscribe on the roll of great painters. He had been, moreover, one of the large group who had trudged to far-away Rome, and come under the influence of Elsheimer there, and the exotic and ill-adapted traditions and conventions of the school were not calculated to appeal to so ardent and eager a seeker after truth as Rembrandt. He wanted to find nature, and was not to be put off by a diluted semi-Italian imitation of it; and so, after a few months' trial, he packed up his paints and canvases, and returned to his family in Leyden "to study and practise painting alone and in his own way," to quote again the garrulous Orlers.

That so indefatigable and untiring a worker as Rembrandt did not waste time, when once he was safely established in his father's house, is certain, for Orlers says that he worked incessantly as long as the light lasted; but we know of nothing that he produced until three years later, when he painted two still existing pictures, signing and dating both.

From this time his reputation and that of Lievensz ripened rapidly.

Arent van Buchel, in his "Res Pictoriae," mentions him in 1628; and Constantin Huygens, in a ma.n.u.script autobiography, discovered in 1891 by Dr Worp of Groningen, and written probably between 1629 and 1631, was enthusiastic concerning both, "still beardless yet already famous"--an appreciation that was not to be without its favourable influence on Rembrandt's future. Nor was this growing fame productive of mere empty praise. In February 1628, when he was only one-and-twenty, Gerard Dou, his first pupil, came to him and remained until he left Leyden for Amsterdam three years later.

Many causes probably combined to promote this change of residence. On the twenty-seventh of April 1630 the first break in the united family circle was brought about by the death of his father. The blow must have been a heavy one, for he must have been a kindly and sympathetic companion to his children, if we may judge by the refined and sensitive face which looks out at us from the portraits believed to be his, and a merry one to boot, with a pretty humour of his own, if M. Michel be justified in his conclusion that the etching of the bald man with a chain (B. 292) is also a portrait of him. The loss further brought changes into the family arrangements. The eldest brother, as far back as 1621, had been crippled by an accident, and on March 16th of that year a life-interest in the estate to the amount of 125 florins per annum had been formally established for his maintenance, so that the superintendence of the affairs of the mill fell to the second son Adriaen, who abandoned his trade of shoe-making to undertake it, and made nothing, or worse, of it.

The young artist's reputation as a portrait painter had, moreover, spread to Amsterdam some time before, and many commissions came to him thence. For a while he merely went over, stayed long enough to do the work, and returned again to Leyden, but as the demands upon his time increased this must have proved a wasteful, inconvenient, and finally impossible proceeding. Leyden, again, was a University town, where religion and philosophy were more thought of and more sought after than such a trifle as art, as indeed is still the case in some University towns that could be mentioned; while Amsterdam was a city of prosperous traders making more money than they knew how to spend or employ, and ready enough to devote some of their superfluity to portraits of themselves and wives, or pictures of incidents and places, and it was clearly desirable that one able and willing to satisfy their wishes in this respect should be upon the spot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Ca.s.sel Gallery_

PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT'S FATHER

(ABOUT 1631)]

The little coterie of artists, too, was on the verge of dispersal in any case, by the loss of Rembrandt's closest tie with it, Jan Lievensz. He had sold a picture of a man reading by a turf fire to the Prince of Orange, who had presented it to the English Amba.s.sador, and he in turn had pa.s.sed it on to that king of picture lovers, Charles the First, who had been so well pleased with it that a pressing invitation to visit England had been sent to the painter, and accepted. Nor, probably, was it only the chance of obtaining more employment that attracted Rembrandt. The famous "Anatomy Lesson" bears the date 1632, and, even if the commission for it had not actually been offered during the preceding year, it may very well have been suggested in the course of conversation by the doctor who had added to his name, Claes Pietersz, that of Tulp, taking it from a tulip which was carved on the front of his house, who figures so conspicuously in it. If this were so, it must have been evident to Rembrandt that to undertake so large and important a picture while living in another city would mean either risking the uniformity and continuity of his work, or settling down for a prolonged period in lodgings in Amsterdam, and this may well have confirmed his decision to at once establish himself there permanently.

Finally, I like to fancy, though it certainly cannot be proved, that Rembrandt had already, in one of his flying visits to that city, met the girl upon whom, while she lived, the larger part of his life's happiness was to depend. The evidence is, it must be owned, slight, but is not altogether wanting. Among the pictures of the year 1630, and, according to M. Michel, even of 1628 and onwards, we find a series of portraits of a fair-haired girl with a round, full forehead, and rather small eyes and mouth, which Dr Bode believes to be portraits of the painter's sister Lysbeth, while M. Michel considers that some of the later ones are really portraits of Saskia, urging the objection that many of them were undoubtedly painted after his removal to Amsterdam, whither there is not the slightest reason to suppose that Lysbeth accompanied him, what evidence there is pointing directly to the contrary. On the other hand, M. Michel admits that the type which is known to be Saskia blends almost indistinguishably with that supposed to be Lysbeth, and offers the distinctly dubious explanation that Rembrandt was, so to speak, so imbued with the features of his sister that he unconsciously transferred them to a large extent to the girl he loved. If, however, as we may quite reasonably suppose, Rembrandt had met and admired Saskia during his first stay in Amsterdam, and continued to do so during his after-visits, the occurrence of her features in his work would be what we ought to expect.

There was, on the other hand, but a single objection to the scheme--the parting with his mother; and to such an affectionate and home-loving nature as Rembrandt's the difficulty can have been no small one. Still, a man has to do a man's work in this life. Adriaen, his brother, and Lysbeth, his sister, were there to minister to her comfort, while Amsterdam was no great distance away; and though, doubtless, it was not altogether without tears that the widowed Neeltje consented to the departure of her youngest son, the decision was taken, and the consent yielded at last.

Indeed, it was inevitable that so great and, at one time, so popular an artist should, sooner or later, gravitate to the capital of his country; for, since the decay of Antwerp, Amsterdam was without a rival in the world for prosperity--the head-centre of commerce, the hub of the trade-universe. Sir Thomas Overbury, in 1609, describes it as surpa.s.sing "Seville, Lisbon, or any other mart town in Christendom." Evelyn, writing in 1641, says in his diary, "that it is certainly the most busie concourse of mortalls now upon the whole earth and the most addicted to com'erce."

Neither tempest nor battle could check her energy; and throughout the long desultory war from 1621 to 1648 between Spain and Holland, her traders hurried to and from the enemy's ports, supplying her even with the very munitions of war to carry on the contest; while for all this acc.u.mulated wealth there was but a limited outlet. Necessities being superabundant, it must be either h.o.a.rded or expended on luxuries, and among these pictures held high place. Quoting once more from Evelyn, we find him writing on August 13th, 1641: "We arrived late at Roterdam, where was their annual marte or faire, so furnished with pictures (especially Landskips and Drolleries, as they call those clounish representations), that I was amaz'd. Some I bought and sent into England. The reson of this store of pictures and their cheapness proceedes from their want of land to employ their stock, so that it is an ordinary thing to find a common Farmer lay out two or three thousand pounds in this comodity. Their houses are full of them, and they vend them at their faires to very great gaines." So, for a time, the Dutch painters drove a thriving trade; and as Amsterdam was by far the richest city, to Amsterdam the successful painter must needs repair.

CHAPTER III

DAYS OF PROSPERITY

Some time then in 1631 the die was cast, and the removal accomplished.

There is reason to believe that he went at first to stay or lodge with Hendrick van Uylenborch, a dealer in pictures and other objects of art.

Among his first proceedings on his arrival, was one sufficiently characteristic of him and destined to be repeated only too often in the future. He lent Hendrick money, one thousand florins, to be repayable in a year with three months' notice. Soon after, if not before, this indiscreet financial operation, as it proved later, he found the suitable residence he had meanwhile been seeking, on the Bloemgracht, a ca.n.a.l on the west side of the town, running north-east and south-west between the Prinsen Gracht and the Lynbaan Gracht, in a district, at that time on the extreme outskirts of the town, known as the Garden, from the floral names bestowed upon its streets and ca.n.a.ls.

Here he settled to his work, and here in a short time fortune came to him. The enthusiasm aroused by "The Anatomy Lesson," when it was finished and hung in its predestined place in the little dissecting-room or Snijkamer of the Guild of Surgeons in the Nes, near the Dam, was immediate and immense. The artist leapt at once into the front rank, and became the fas.h.i.+onable portrait painter of the day. From three portraits, other than those of his own circle, painted in 1631, and ten in 1632, the number rose to forty between that year and 1634; or, taking all the surviving portraits between 1627 and 1631, we have forty-one, while from the five following years, from 1632 to 1636, there are one hundred and two. Commissions, indeed, flowed in faster than he could execute them, so Houbraken a.s.sures us, and the not infrequent occurrence of a pair of portraits, husband and wife, one painted a year or more after the other, tends to confirm this; so that those who wished to be immortalised by him had often to wait their turn for months together, while all the wealth and fas.h.i.+on of the city flocked to the far-off studio in the outskirts, the more fortunate to give their sittings, the later comers to put down their names in antic.i.p.ation of the future leisure. From the beginning, too, pupils came clamouring to his doors, Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol, Philips Koninck, Geerbrandt van den Eeckhout, Jan Victors, Leendeert Cornelisz, and others, eager to pay down their hundred florins a year, as Sandrart says they did, and work with and for the lion of the day.

Not Fortune alone, however, with her retinue of patrons, and Fame, with her train of pupils, sought him out; Love, too, came knocking at his portal, and won a prompt admission. To the many admirable works produced at this time I shall return later, but three of those painted in 1632 call for further notice now. One is an oval picture, belonging to Herr Haro of Stockholm, representing the half-length figure of a girl in profile, facing to the left, fair-haired, and pleasant-looking rather than pretty; the second, in the Museum at Stockholm, shows us the same girl in much the same position, but differently dressed; while the third, in the collection of Prince Liechtenstein at Vienna, is a less pleasing representation of her in full face, wherein the tendency to stoutness and the already developing double chin detract from the piquancy of her expression and make her look more than her actual age, which we know to have been twenty at the time that these were painted.

We have heard her name casually already, in connection with the arrangements for Rembrandt's marriage, when discussing the date of his birth--for this is Saskia van Uylenborch, a cousin of his friend Hendrick, which fact may haply have had something to do with that ready loan of a thousand florins. Though poor Rembrandt, be it said, was, unhappily for him, never backward with loan or gift when he had money to give or lend. Saskia was born in 1612 at Leeuwarden, the chief town of Friesland in the north, across the Zuider Zee, and at the time when Rembrandt met her was an orphan, her mother, Sjukie Osinga, having died in 1619, and her father, Rombertus, a distinguished lawyer in his native place, in 1624. The family left behind was a large one, consisting, besides Saskia, of three brothers, two being lawyers and one a soldier, and five sisters, all married, who, as soon as the worthy Rombertus was laid to rest, seem to have begun wrangling among themselves concerning the estate; the quarrel, chiefly, as it appears, being sustained by the several brothers-in-law, and leading shortly to an appeal to law.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna_

PORTRAIT OF SASKIA

(1632)]

Among the less close relations was a cousin Aaltje, who was married to Jan Cornelis Sylvius, a minister of the Reformed Church, who, coming from Friesland, had settled in Amsterdam in 1610, and with them Saskia was in the habit of coming to stay. Where and when Rembrandt first met her we do not know. Probably at the house of Hendrick; it may have been, as has been said, in 1628 or earlier, for, if the acquaintance began in 1631, it ripened rapidly. Without accepting unhesitatingly all M.

Michel's identifications of her, not only in portraits and studies but in subjects, such as that one which is known as "The Jewish Bride," now in the collection of Prince Liechtenstein, there is no question that she sat to him several times during the two years 1632 and 1633. The attraction was mutual; Rembrandt soon became a welcome visitor to the Sylvius household, and, in token doubtless of the kindness and hospitality which he there met with, he etched, in 1634, a portrait of the good old minister (B. 266).

The course of true love in this case ran smoothly enough; the young people soon came to an understanding; no difficulties were raised by Sylvius, who acted as Saskia's guardian; and the marriage was only deferred till Saskia came of age. The union, indeed, from a worldly point of view, was unexceptionable. Saskia, it is true, was of a good family, while Rembrandt sprang from the lower middle cla.s.s, but he had already carved out for himself a rank above all pedigrees. Saskia was twenty, and he, with all his fame, was only twenty-six. The wedding, then, was decided on, and Rembrandt, painting Saskia yet again, put into her hands a sprig of rosemary, at that time in Holland an emblem of betrothal. It was possibly even fixed for some date late in 1633, when Saskia would have pa.s.sed her twenty-first birthday.

Just at this time, to confirm, if that had been needed, Rembrandt's increasing reputation and prospects of future prosperity, he was brought into business relations with the chief personage in the land, Prince Frederick-Henry, who in 1625, on the death of his brother Maurice, had succeeded to the office of Stathouder, as the head of the Republic was officially ent.i.tled. Constantin Huygens, whose earlier enthusiasm for Rembrandt's work we have already noted, was the Prince's Secretary, acting in that quality as intermediary in his many dealings with artists, and clearly found time in the intervals of his duties to continue his acquaintance with Rembrandt. It was probably on his recommendation that the artist had painted in 1632 the portrait of his brother Maurice, and it was certainly at his suggestion that the Stathouder bought "The Raising of the Cross," now at Munich. Rembrandt, indeed, says as much in a letter to Huygens, still existing in the British Museum, in which he invites him to come and inspect the companion picture, "The Descent from the Cross," for which, though offering to leave it to the Prince's generosity, he considers two hundred livres would be a reasonable price. The picture was bought, and so content was the Prince with his purchase that soon afterwards he commissioned three other pictures to complete the set. The exact date of this event is unknown, but it cannot have been long delayed, for, in a letter written early in 1636 the painter informs Huygens that one of the three, "The Ascension," is finished and the other two half done.

With such guarantees of continued good fortune, there was nothing, when Saskia was once of age, to necessitate longer delay, in the completion of his happiness, but in the autumn she was peremptorily called away to Franeker, a town in Friesland, between Leeuwarden and the sea, where her sister Antje, the wife of Johannes Maccovius, professor of Theology, was lying ill, and where, on November the ninth, she died. This untoward occurrence put an end to the possibility of an immediate marriage, and Saskia went to spend the winter with another sister, Hiskia, who was married to Gerrit van Loo, a secretary of the government, and lived at Sainte Anne Parrochie, in the extreme north-west of Friesland; while Rembrandt, discontentedly enough, no doubt, toiled through the long winter months in his studio at Amsterdam.

In the spring of 1634, however, the suns.h.i.+ne returned again into his life, and he commemorated the advent, appropriately enough, by painting the bringer of it in the guise of Flora. The period of mourning was now at an end, and some time in May, probably, Saskia once more returned to Hiskia's to make preparation for the approaching day; while Sylvius, as her representative, and Rembrandt began to arrange the more formal business matters. On June 10th, as recorded by Dr Scheltema, Sylvius, as the bride's cousin, engaged to give full consent before the third asking of the banns; while Rembrandt, on his part, promised to obtain his mother's permission. Whether he merely wrote to Leyden for this, or whether, as is more probable, he went in person, we do not know; but in either case he wasted no time, for on the fourteenth he produced the necessary doc.u.ments, and prayed at the same time that the formal preliminaries might be cut as short as possible. His appeal was evidently received with favour, for eight days later, on June 22nd, at Bildt, in the presence of Gerrit and Hiskia van Loo, he was duly married, first by the civil authorities, and afterwards by the minister Rodolphe Hermansz Luinga in the Anna-kerk.

As far as domestic happiness depending upon their relations with one another went, there is every reason to suppose that this union was a thoroughly successful one; but we cannot help, nevertheless, feeling some doubts as to whether it was altogether the best that might have been for Rembrandt. Frank and joyous, but strong-willed, not to say obstinate, recklessly generous and prodigal, and without a thought for what the future might bring forth, he needed some firm yet tender hand to check, without seeming too much to control, his lavish impulses.

Impossible to drive, yet easy enough to lead, a giant in his studio, a child in his business relations with the world outside its doors, he should have found some steady practical head to regulate his household affairs and introduce some order and economy into his haphazard ways.

Such, unfortunately for him in the end, Saskia was not. Devoted to him, she yielded in everything, and his will was her law. As her love for him led her to let him do always as he would, so his pa.s.sion for her led him to shower costly gifts upon her--pearls and diamonds, gold-work and silver-work, brocades and embroideries; nothing that could serve to adorn her was too good or too expensive. She would have been as happy in plain homespun, as long as he was there; but to give largely was in the nature of the man, and the very fortune that she brought with her was an evil, even at the time, in that it led him to further extravagances, while in the future it proved a still more serious one.

Furthermore, Rembrandt, hot-headed and impetuous as he was, must needs fling himself into the family quarrels and suits-at-law, taking therein the part of the one who had stood by him and Saskia at the altar, Gerrit van Loo, in whom, though he had possibly never set eyes on him till he went north to his wedding, he had already developed so complete a confidence that, exactly one month later, on July 22nd, as Dr Scheltema discovered, he gave him a full power of attorney to act for him in all affairs connected with the property in Friesland. From this sudden and violent partisans.h.i.+p still more trouble arose in due course, owing largely to the fact that his champions.h.i.+p of Gerrit was soon after justified by his winning one of the many cases brought before the court of Friesland in the course of the prolonged dispute.

For the time, however, there is no doubt their happiness was supreme, and if for her sake he was energetically brewing the storm that was to burst upon him later, there were as yet no threatening clouds upon the horizon. Nor, be it said, was it on her account alone that he scattered money broadcast. The impulse to collect works of art, pictures, engravings, casts and statues, armour and curious objects, had begun to influence him even in early days at Leyden, and had become by that time a perfect mania. On February 22nd, 1635, we find his name as a purchaser at the Van Sommeren sale, and thereafter he reappears again and again as buyer at various auctions. But not even in this could he attempt to be business-like. Baldinucci, a Florentine, in a volume published in 1686, gives many interesting details anent Rembrandt, which he obtained at first hand from one of his later pupils, Bernard Keilh, a Dane, and among them relates that, when at a sale he saw anything he coveted, he ran it up in one bid to a wholly impossible price, thus making sure of it, and at the same time, as he explained, paying honour to his art.

The Van Uylenborch family quarrels happily did not extend to the sisters, amongst whom the most amicable relations appear to have prevailed. At any rate, in the summer of 1635, we find Saskia revisiting Sainte Anne Parrochie, to be with Hiskia during her confinement, and subsequently at the baptism of the child, a mark of kindly feeling the more notable in that she herself was about to become a mother. In the early winter, having returned meanwhile to her home, she gave birth to a son, who, on December 15th, in the Oudekerk, was christened Rombertus, after her father. Rembrandt's delight in this small person is indicated by numerous sketches of him and his mother; but the happiness, like all that he experienced, was short-lived, for the child did not long survive its birth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Dresden Gallery_

REMBRANDT AND SASKIA

(ABOUT 1635)]

Rembrandt, at some time before his marriage, had removed from the Bloemgracht to Saint Antonies Breestraat, in the heart of the city, close to the Nieuwe Markt, and by 1636 had moved once more to the Nieuwe Doelstraat, whence the letter to Huygens, already referred to, was addressed. There can be no doubt that the change was an improvement, for the artist must then have been at the height of his prosperity and fame.

Throughout Holland, imitators of his style were springing up, for the public would have no other. His studio was freely sought by pupils; his home-life was pa.s.sed in a circle of trusted friends, and the broadly sympathetic nature of the man, which aided so largely in raising him to the first place among portrait painters, is seen in the various pursuits of these.

Fellow-painters, apart from his pupils, were not conspicuous among them, and those we find are chiefly landscape painters--Roghman and van der Helst, Ruysdael and Berchem, van de Cappelle and Jan a.s.selyn. With ministers he was largely acquainted, probably through Jan Sylvius, who, however, died on November 19th, 1638, among them being Alenson, Henry Swalm, and Anslo; while Tulp probably first introduced the medical element, Bonus, van der Linden, and Deyman. Several dealers in objects of art, brought in by Hendrick van Uylenborch, or picked up in the course of business transactions, were among his friends--Pieter de la Tombe, Clement de Jonghe, Abraham Francen, and others; while the worthy though conceited Coppenol, and the jeweller, Jan Lutma, together with the burgomaster Six, were among those who remained faithful to the last.

Rembrandt's champions.h.i.+p of Gerrit van Loo in the family differences began about this time to bear troublesome fruit. The losers in the action already mentioned, in the course of the year 1634 seem to have nursed an especial grudge against Saskia, and, to relieve their ruffled feelings, had been spreading abroad reports reflecting on her, a.s.serting that she had "dissipated her paternal inheritance in dress and ostentation." There was, as far as Rembrandt himself, at least, was concerned, too much truth in the story to render the scandal altogether stingless. The thrust at Saskia, moreover, angered him more, probably, than one at himself alone would have done, and we find him accordingly rus.h.i.+ng headlong into the law-courts with an action for damages against one Albert van Loo, declaring that "he and his wife were amply, even superabundantly, provided for."

Whether he was ever called upon to prove this statement does not appear; probably not, since the court found, in July 1638, that he had not sufficient grounds for action. It is doubtful how far he could have established its truth had he been required to do so. There can be small question that he believed it to be true, though his paying 637 florins the previous year for a book of drawings and engravings by Lucas van Leyden, and again, in October of the same year, 530 florins for a picture of Hero and Leander by Rubens, might only indicate his habitual indifference to ways and means. We know also that at the time he was getting from five to six hundred florins for his portraits, but, judging by the number known to exist--a very imperfect test it need scarcely be said--the demand for these was beginning to fall off, there being seven for 1636, four for 1637, two for 1638, and four for 1639, while even these small numbers include three of himself, and one believed to be his mother.

The strongest reason for supposing that he was in some financial embarra.s.sment is found in his correspondence at the beginning of the latter year with Huygens. Writing in January from the Suijkerbackerij, a house on the borders of the Binnen-Amstel, whither he had removed at an unknown date, he announces the completion of the last two of the Stathouder's commissions, and only fifteen days later he presses for immediate payment of the 1244 florins due to him, on the grounds that the money would be then extremely useful to him. Since there was some delay, he renewed the appeal, though Huygens, on February 17th, had already given orders for the discharge of the debt. This unceremonious dunning, though by proxy, of a powerful Prince, does not seem altogether to indicate that superabundance of which Rembrandt boasted; but there was, as we know, a special reason, apart from any financial difficulties, which may have accounted for this urgent need of ready money.