Rembrandt and "the Night Watch."

In the year 1616 there was a small hamlet of some six or eight houses on the bank of the river Rhine, not far from Leyden. One house, a little superior to the others, had inscribed above its door "Jacques Gerritz, Flour Merchant." Jacques Gerritz had risen from being a plain malt miller to that of a "Flour Merchant" through the dower of the woman he married.

His older children were all born in the mill by the Rhine; hence his famous son, Paul Rembrandt, was called Rembrandt van Ryn (of the Rhine). An incident occurred in the year 1616 that forever changed the current of a life, and marked the first milestone in the career of the greatest of Dutch painters.

The mother at home weighed out to customers the flour and meal ground in the mill. The children came home from school one evening in 1616 and were welcomed with love and affection. "Have you all been good children to-day?" Three had proof of good behavior; the fourth boy was silent. "And my boy Paul, can he also make his mother happy?" "No," was the quick answer. "I was whipped yesterday, was whipped to-day, and will be whipped to-morrow, for I will not study Latin! I do not want to be a lawyer; I want to be a painter, like Paul Rubens." Then came the oft-repeated conflict between father and mother--the father with his emphatic "You must," the mother, with quick intuition, "You may," and the boy became a painter. This incident occurred nearly three hundred years ago, but it was not until 1877 that the history of Rembrandt van Ryn, from his boyhood, became known. Since then there has been a great Rembrandt revival, and many new facts have come to light. Certain facts, however, have never been disputed. He was known as an independent artist living in Amsterdam in 1630; that he carefully dated his paintings which he considered worthy of a date. Legends regarding his visits to foreign courts and countries have now been disproved; he never left his native land.

His father's mill was his first studio, and to the light that came into the barren loft through an opening or ventilator in the roof, to his narrow environments, is largely due the fact of his being the master of chiaroscuro, light and shade. Of all the great painters, none is more popular at the present day, or more talked about and written about, than Rembrandt. A colorist, save once or twice, he never was--he lowered the scale of color; neither was he a correct draughtsman--he was never sure of proportion, and had scarcely the sense of line. But of light and shade he was the supreme master. It was almost his only mode of expression, and with it he gained such strange effects as to rank him one of the greatest and most profoundly original minds in the art-history of any country. Chiaroscuro does not mean black and white, but light and shade, both containing color. Rembrandt threw a strong light into the center of his pictures, so that they seem almost concave.

To understand many of his pictures, especially his "Night Watch," they need to be referred back to their time.

Rembrandt was born in the year when the independence of the United Netherlands was acknowledged by Spain. He grew up in an atmosphere of triumph over a great victory. Various guilds and corporations and military organizations were holding anniversary meetings. This was especially the case in the cities where civic guards had been formed from the most prominent citizens, on whom depended the safety and welfare of the city. Each guild and guard had their own hall for meeting, from whence they issued in obedience to any call to duty. The offices of captain and lieutenants were greatly prized, and the ensign of the company was generally the handsomest and wealthiest man in the company.

These dignitaries gradually made a custom of perpetuating their transient honors by presenting a portrait-picture of their guild or guard, to hang in the hall. This accounts for the numerous group-pictures in the halls of the National Museum at Amsterdam. Pictures of the civic guards were more popular in Amsterdam than in other cities, for here its men were more deeply drawn upon for war. Corporation pictures had been generally arranged in two rows of portraiture, and it had never occurred to any one before Rembrandt to add movement to the subject. When Rembrandt received the commission to paint a large canvas for the Musketeers' Hall of Amsterdam, he claimed absolute liberty in his treatment of the subject, and he brought into his picture some memories of his childhood at Leyden.

"The Night Watch" was so called, for many years, because from the dark shadows, it was supposed that the guard had been called out in the night. The captain of this civic guard was Frans Banning Cocq, one of the foremost citizens of Amsterdam at that period. He had purchased the seignory of Pummerland, and had received from James II. a title of nobility in 1620. The erroneous title has very lately been corrected by finding a water-color sketch made for the album of Banning Cocq, between 1650-1660. This sketch was inscribed "The Young Lord of Pummerland gives the order to march, to his Lieutenant." Banning Cocq commanded the Civic Guard of the First Ward, to which it is suggested that Rembrandt belonged. The work is so familiar to students of art that it hardly seems necessary to describe it.

The captain has given his orders to the lieutenant; the drum beats the alarm; the ensign unfurls the flag; every man snatches a weapon of some kind; dogs bark; children slip in and get entangled among the legs of their fathers or brothers, which helps to prove it, what the greatest critics now pronounce it, a "Daylight Call." It was the largest canvas covered by the great Rembrandt, and is now placed in the National, or Ryks, Museum in Amsterdam.

Certain defects are admitted by all. The lights are too much broken, the canvas is too crowded with figures; but this may not have been the case when it left the hands of the master, 258 years ago. This great memorial painting, "The Night Watch" (1642), is now catalogued in Rembrandt's works as "The Sortie of Frans Banning Cocq's Company, commonly called 'The Night Watch.'" But by its old title, "The Night Watch," it will always hold a place apart in the history of corporation pictures. Ten years before, he painted his "Lesson in Anatomy;" and twenty years later "The Syndics of the Cloth." In these three paintings he summed up in immortal types, the Dutch people of his age.