(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Overwhelmed by his domestic sorrows—he lost his old mother two years before Saskia died—neglected by his former patrons, Rembrandt turned to Nature for consolation. He wandered about the countryside recording all he saw. Practically all his landscapes were painted between 1640 and 1652. Many of his most beautiful landscape etchings were also executed during this period. The most famous of them all, ‘The Three Trees’, was done in 1643. It shows a view of Amsterdam from a slight eminence outside the town, and a storm-cloud and its shadow are used to intensify the brilliance of the light and the dramatic aspect of this mood of Nature. This is landscape in the grand style; but its homelier, more intimate note appealed equally to the artist. A lovely example of the picturesque corner portrayed for its own intrinsic beauty is the etching executed in 1645 known as ‘Six Bridge’. Tradition relates that this plate was etched against time for a wager at the country house of Rembrandt’s most loyal friend, Jan Six, while the servant was fetching the mustard, that had been forgotten for a meal, from a neighboring village. There is nothing impossible in the story, for Rembrandt is known to have been an impetuous and rapid worker on occasion; but if this little masterpiece was done in haste, we must not forget that it was also done with ‘the knowledge of a lifetime.’
Even while Saskia was alive Rembrandt was in want of ready money, and when on his mother’s death in 1640 he inherited a half-share of a mill, he hastened to have it transferred to his brother Wilhelm and his nephew. Though he lost money by the transaction, he probably gained his end in keeping all the mill in the family instead of a share going to his creditors. Then in 1647 he became involved in lawsuits with Saskia’s family, who objected to Rembrandt’s connection with his servant Hendrickje Stoffels, and wished to prevent Rembrandt from being trustee for his and Saskia’s son Titus. These lawsuits, which lasted till after 1653, and ended in Saskia’s relatives obtaining the trusteeship but not the custody of Titus, greatly contributed to Rembrandt’s difficulties.
His marriage with Hendrickje Stoffels, a woman of humble birth, was another cause of offense to aristocratic patrons; all the same, it was a wise action. This devoted woman mothered Titus with loving and unremitting care; she made great efforts to stem the tide of ill-fortune, and when the crash came and Rembrandt was made bankrupt in 1656, she loyally shared her husband’s troubles and used her wits to rebuild their fortunes. As soon as Titus was old enough she combined with in keeping an old curiosity shop, starting, one imagines, with some relics of the treasures Rembrandt had amassed for Saskia. Money, or the want of it, however, was not a thing which could profoundly trouble a philosophic dreamer like Rembrandt. If he had it, he spent it royally; if he had it not, he went without. Only a year after his bankruptcy he achieved one of the world’s masterpieces of portraiture, ‘The Artist’s Son Titus,’ in the Wallace Collection. If you look at the Pellicorne portraits, also in the Wallace Collection, you will obtain a fair idea of Rembrandt’s ordinary professional style in 1632-4, when his painting was still popular. But how thin and shallow these early portraits of the son he loved so dearly. Turning to the ‘Titus’ after these early works, we see how far Rembrandt has traveled. Three or four years later he painted the wonderful ‘Portrait of Francoise van Wasserhoven’, in the National Gallery, one of the most reverent, sympathetic, and intimate studies of old age ever painted.
Throughout his life Rembrandt was a keen student of human nature, and no painter has ever penetrated further than he did into the inner lives of the men and women he painted. His wonderful insight into character made him the greatest psychologist in portraiture the world has yet seen, and since he searched faces above all for the marks of life’s experience which they bore, old people—who had had the longest experience—were inevitably subjects peculiarly dear to him and subjects which he interpreted with consummate mastery. His own face he painted over and over again, and if we study the sequence of his self-portraiture from early manhood to ripe old age, we see not only the gradual development of his technical powers but also the steady advance made by Rembrandt in expressing with poignant intensity the thoughts and emotions of humanity.
Of Rembrandt’s technique Sir John Everett Millais wrote: ‘In his first period Rembrandt was very careful and minute in detail, and there is evidence of stippling in his flesh paintings; but in the fullness of his power all appearance of such manipulation and minuteness vanished in the breadth and facility of his brush, though the advantage of his early manner remained....I have closely examined his pictures in the National Gallery, and have actually seen beneath the grand veil of breadth, the early work that his art conceals from untrained eyes—the whole science of painting.’ Among his contemporaries the minute detail in the work of his earlier period was far more admired than the ‘veil of breadth’ which he cast over his later paintings, and it was long before people who admired his early portraits could be persuaded that his later paintings were not only equally good, but vastly superior both in workmanship and expression.
Gradually among the discerning few the outstanding excellence of Rembrandt’s portraiture was again acknowledged, and in 1661 he received a commission for another official portrait group. He was asked to paint a portrait group of five officials of the Clothmaker’s Company, and staging them on the dais on which they presided over a meeting, Rembrandt produced the wonder-work known as ‘The Syndics.’ Avoiding the dangers of ‘The Sortie,’ Rembrandt places all five figures in a clear light and yet gives them the unity of a scene taken from life.
Alas! this fresh artistic triumph was dearly paid for by more domestic misfortunes. Soon after this work was completed, Hendrickje the loyal helpmate died. Titus, now grown up, married his cousin, and after less than a year of married life he also died. Now, indeed, Rembrandt was alone in the world, and though a posthumous daughter to Titus was born in 1669, the artist, now his sixty third year was too worn out to struggle much longer against ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’ He lived long enough to see his little granddaughter Titia christened after father, and then, crushed by the accumulated sorrows of a lifetime, passed to his long rest on October 4, 1669. To all appearance the illness and death of the greatest man Holland ever produced passed unnoticed, and only the bare fact of his burial in the Westerkerck, Amsterdam, is attested by an official entry.
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