THE PICTURE THAT RUINED REMBRANDT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18465, 28 January 1922, Page 17

THE PICTURE THAT RUINED REMBRANDT.

• When Rembrandt “Prince of Shadows,” was ih his early twenties, he left the old university town of Leyden, where he was born, and went to Amsterdam to make his fortune as an artist.. By the-time he was 30 years old he was the richest and most famous painter in Holland. . But in another 10 years friends, popularity, and fortune were lost to him, and the chief cause of his downfall was the best picture he ever painted, “The Night Watch.” Light and Shadow.— He was already Well established when he met the auburn-haired Saskia Uylenborch at her cousin’s picture store. Their life for eight years was like a Rembrandt painting. It varied between brightest light and darkest; shadow. They lived in a splendid house, filled with extravagantly beautiful furnishings. Rembrandt was never weary painting his attractive wife, decked in brocades and jewels. He gained equal renown for his art, his possessions, his gay spirits, and his headstrong, profligate habits.' He painted his sitters in his effective, original way, and never paid any attention to their wishes. Patrons demurred, but they did not desert him until tho trouble over “The Night Watch” started. In 1642, when he was about 35, he began this great canvas, which shows the civic guard of Amsterdam leaving the company quarters. Actually, the sortie was in the daytijne. The sombreness of the shadows led critics of a later era to think it represented a ni'ght scene. Amsterdam Guard.—In tho large towns of Holland the aristocracy organised to keep order in the streets. Rembrandt was asked to paint the pictures of Franz Banning Cock, of the Amsterdam guard, and his rich young aides. The cost was to bo divided between 25 to 30 members. Rembrandt, at the height of his powers, readily accepted the commission, foreseeing how he should make the canvas , glow and move in brilliant sun and velvet shadow. Tho chief portrait interest was centred on Captain Cock and his lieutenant. The rest of the group were mere puppets for Rembrandt’s brush to play with. He made a masterpiece—he himself had infinite satisfaction in it, for it expressed, as no picture had ever done before, his gift for handling light and variations of light. But the guardsmen were far from pleased. Except for a few whose faces