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 canal 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 canals.

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 fashionable 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 assures 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 fashion 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 anticipation 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.

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 class, 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 passed 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 entitled. 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 sunshine 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 documents, 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 passion 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 partisanship still more trouble arose in due course, owing largely to the fact that his championship 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.

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 passed 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 Asselyn. 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 championship 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, asserting 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 rushing 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 embarrassment 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.

He had decided to settle himself finally, not long after the birth on July 1st, 1638, of his second child, a daughter, christened at the Oudekerk on July 22nd, Cornelia, after his mother, and on January 5th, 1639, had purchased from one Christoffel Thysz a house in the Joden-Breestraat, now Number 68, for 13,000 florins. Though only one quarter of this sum had to be paid within one year, the rest being distributed over the following five or six, he seems for once to have been actually eager to pay the money, and by May had discharged half the cost and taken possession.

One birth and three deaths mark the year 1640. The first, of another daughter, on July 29th, who was also christened Cornelia, the elder child bearing that name having died in the meantime. The name, however, seems to have been an ill-omened one, for its second bearer did not survive a month, its burial being recorded in the Zuiderkerk on August 25th. Of the other deaths the first was that of an aunt of Saskia, who was possibly also her godmother, as she bore the same name, and certainly left her some property, since Ferdinand Bol was sent, on August 30th, to Leeuwarden with formal authority to take possession on her behalf. The other death must have been, to Rembrandt at any rate, a far heavier blow, for by it he lost, in September or October, his mother, to whom he was cordially attached, and from whom his residence in Amsterdam had only partially separated him, since we know by various portraits, painted subsequent to 1631, that either he visited her or she him with considerable frequency.

An event arising out of the consequent settlement of the estate has given rise to the suspicion that, then at all events, Rembrandt was in difficulties, but it is again possible to take another point of view. The inheritance of each child amounted to 2490 florins, and a further 1600 remained to be divided later. The business was entrusted to Adriaen and Lysbeth, and Rembrandt, unhesitatingly accepting every suggestion made by them, contented himself with a mortgage on half the mill, the redemption of which was to be postponed indefinitely. No sooner, however, was the arrangement completed than he authorised his brother Willem to sell his rights for what they would fetch. This may mean, as M. Michel supposes, that he wanted the money promptly, yet wished to deal tenderly with a brother who was himself by no means beforehand with the world; but the two reasons seem somewhat inconsistent with the facts. That Rembrandt, even though pressed for money himself, should have practically forgone his due, and consented to take a small annual interest which he could, in case necessity arose, easily forgo, is quite reconcilable with what we know of him; but that, having acted so, he should have at once undone the good he proposed, by selling his claim to some stranger, who would certainly demand the full letter of his bond, is hard to believe.

Any other evidence concerning these presumed embarrassments is certainly against them. At this very time he was cheerfully accepting security for considerable sums of money lent, in addition to the original one thousand florins, to Hendrick van Uylenborch; and in later years, when his affairs came to be inquired into, Lodewyck van Ludick and Adriaen de Wees, dealers both, swore that between 1640 and 1650 Rembrandt’s collections, without counting the pictures, were worth 11,000 florins, while a jeweller, Jan van Loo, stated that Saskia had two large pear-shaped pearls, two rows of valuable pearls forming a necklace and bracelets, a large diamond in a ring, two diamond earrings, two enamelled bracelets, and various articles of plate. Finally, Rembrandt also, at a later date, estimated that his estate at the time of Saskia’s death amounted to 40,750 florins; and though the estimate was made under circumstances calculated to incline him to exaggerate rather than diminish the amount, it must be considered as approximately correct.

Poor Saskia was not destined to enjoy much longer her plate and jewellery. Death, having entered the family, was thenceforth busy. Titia died at Flushing on June 16th, 1641; and Saskia herself, after the birth of Titus in September of that year, possibly never enjoyed really good health again. By the following spring she was unmistakably failing, and at nine in the morning of June 5th, 1642, she made her will. She was not even then without hope of recovery, for there are express stipulations as to any further children she might bear, but the pitiful irregularity of her signature at the end of the document shows how forlorn this hope was; and, in fact, she died within the following fortnight, and was buried on the 19th of June in the Oudekerk, where Rembrandt subsequently purchased the place of her sepulture.

Upon what this loss must have meant to Rembrandt, with his affectionate nature and almost morbid devotion to a home-life I need not dwell, nor did Fate rest content with dealing him this single blow. The great picture, which forms the chief ornament of the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam, “The Sortie of the Company of Banning Cocq,” better known under the inaccurate title of “The Night-Watch,” was no sooner completed, in the course of the same year, than it aroused a storm of vituperative criticism. The reasons for this I must defer till I come to the consideration of the paintings, and must only note the fact here, and the dwindling of Rembrandt’s popularity, which appears to have been, to some extent at least, the consequence.

One dim ray of consolation alone seems to beam through the darkness that overshadowed him, Lievensz, who had long been absent, first in England and subsequently in Antwerp, came to settle in Amsterdam, and doubtless did all that in him lay to comfort his doubly-stricken friend. In the meantime the business matters so loathed by him, and now aggravated by their intimate connection with his bereavement, had to be attended to, though, through the consideration of Saskia’s relatives, they were made as easy for him as well might be. Saskia, by her will, left everything practically to Rembrandt, confident that he would properly educate Titus and start him in life. Ostensibly, indeed, her share of the estate was left to Titus and any other children she might bear, but she expressly stipulated that he was not to be asked to provide any inventory or guarantees to anyone whatsoever. She particularly forbade the interference of any Chamber of Orphans, in especial that at Amsterdam. Rembrandt alone was to have control, and the property, principal and interest, was to all intents his own, unless — an important exception as we shall find — he married again. In that case half of the joint estate at the time of her death was to be put in trust for the child or children, though Rembrandt was still to enjoy the interest for life. It was obvious that the making at once of an inventory of all the property in his possession was the only right course to pursue, in order that the share which might eventually revert to Titus should be accurately known, for Rembrandt was but six-and-thirty, and his re-marriage by no means impossible. He, however, wished to avoid this course, doubtless through that over-mastering distaste for business to which I have had and shall have occasion to refer so often, and having the consent of Hendrick van Uylenborch, obtained permission from the Chamber of Orphans, on December 19th, to enter into possession of the estate without any estimate of its value being recorded.