The Leiden period
After a few months with Pynas, Rembrandt returned to Leiden, where he set up his own studio at the age of 18. His painter friend Jan Lievens remained his partner in this venture. A few years later, Rembrandt recruited students, including the future painter Gerrit Dou. During this period of development, the master executed a series of paintings depicting the five senses. These are his earliest surviving works. They are all the same size and painted in oil on oak panels. Among Rembrandt's early oil paintings, produced during what art historians refer to as the Leiden period (1625-1631), the most striking is The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1625). This highly theatrical painting of the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, a young deacon of the Christian community in Jerusalem, depicts him being stoned to death by some twenty executioners from the assembly of the Sanhedrin, the great council of spiritual leaders of the Jewish community, an episode recounted in the New Testament. The painting is cut diagonally in two, with one part in shadow where one of the Jewish leaders is, and another part bathed in light: Stephen, who is touched, it seems, by divine goodness. The chiaroscuro effect heightens its dramatic impact. Among the crowd, Rembrandt has depicted himself, with a certain ambiguity about his presence among the executioners that suggests he was settling scores with the Church.
The first orders
In 1629, Rembrandt painted his first major commissions for Secretary of State Constantijn Huygens and the court in The Hague. He also won the admiration of Prince Frederik Hendrik, who bought many of his paintings. At the end of 1631, the artist moved to Amsterdam, a dynamic, growing city, where he began painting portraits. In The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp, Rembrandt depicts Professor Nicolaes Tulp surrounded by other surgeons in action, all observing different things. The dynamism of the scene is accentuated by the great contrasts between light and dark.
Rembrandt's success and prosperity
This highly successful painting launched the young Rembrandt on the Amsterdam scene. Commissions poured in from all sides, including Bust of an Old Man with a Black Hat and Gorgerin (1631), Portrait of Princess Amalia van Solms (1632), Portrait of Mauritus Huygens (1632) and A Young Woman with a Fan (1633). In 1634, he married an orphan, Saskia van Uylenburgh, daughter of a lawyer who had been mayor of Leeuwarden. The couple had two children who died shortly after birth, a son in 1635 and a daughter in 1638. During these years, Rembrandt painted biblical and mythological themes on large formats. These paintings are characterized by high-contrast colors and a dramatic atmosphere. Critics see the influence of Rubens in works such as The Tempest on the Sea ofGalilee (1633), TheFeast of Belshazzar (1635) and The Blinding of Samson (1636). In 1639, Rembrandt bought a beautiful house where he moved with his wife, a building that can be visited today in Amsterdam's old Jewish quarter(Rembrandthuis). Buoyed by his success, he went into debt and frantically purchased works of art, clothes, scientific curiosities and various other objects. He used these objects for the life studies he made for his paintings. After the further loss of a newborn child the following year, Rembrandt's wife gives birth to Titus, who survives to adulthood. However, Saskia succumbed to tuberculosis in 1642, shortly after his birth. During the 1640s, Rembrandt's works became darker.
The setbacks of La Ronde de nuit
His large-scale La Ronde de Nuit (1642) is one of the most important commissions of the period, and one of the most famous paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. The painting depicts the bourgeois militia of Amsterdam's Kloveniers, who crisscross the city to protect their clients. This militia is the direct commissioner of the painting, and its customers are furious, for the troop is disorganized, with no sense of unity among the harquebusiers, who seem more intent on celebrating their glory than posing hieratically for posterity. Even Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, for all their power and respect, seem to be in the middle of a tirade on the stage of a vaudeville act... Everyone is looking from side to side, rather than gazing at the same horizon. They seem to be on the move, yet there is no discernible command. The company is also plunged into an unusual chiaroscuro for a genre painting. And apart from Frans Banning Cocq in his black habit and Willem van Ruytenburch in white lace, they are hardly recognizable in the picture. This militia is nowhere near as flamboyant and full of panache as it should have been portrayed: instead, it seems to be a collection of buffoons. The reason for Rembrandt's contempt is a testament to his modernity.
The ruin of Rembrandt
In the years that followed, commissions became rarer. Rembrandt faced financial difficulties, aggravated by the reckless spending on his collection of paintings. Nevertheless, he experimented with frontal lighting and diversified his compositions, as seen in A Woman in Bed (1643), A Girl at the Window (1645) and A Woman Bathing (1654). The painter also explored brushwork, devoting more time to etchings and landscapes. After a long relationship with Geertje Dircx, his son's nurse, which led to a lawsuit against the artist, Rembrandt and his former maid, Hendrickje Stoffels, had a daughter in 1654. The painter incurred the wrath of the Calvinist Church. He turned to his rival, the Mennonite sect. In the 1650s, the master imbued his art with a richer, more colorful palette. His style increasingly diverged from art standards, with some critics denouncing the harshness of his brushstrokes. Works such as An Old Woman Reading (1655) and Hendrickje Stoffels (1654-1659) illustrate the artist's mastery of the use of light. His incessant purchases of works of art, prints and rare objects ruined him, and he went bankrupt in 1656. Rembrandt sold a large part of his collection, including masterpieces by other artists, Asian antiquities and mineral collections, as well as his own house and press to avoid prosecution. He was also persona non grata with the Amsterdam Painters Guild, which he had joined in 1634, forbidding him to sell his works within the guild. He then left his home on the Jodenbreestraat for the discreet house on the Rozengracht in Jordaan, where he continued to paint with the same determination(Saul and David, The Prodigal Son...). Then came a brief period of respite. To remedy this dramatic situation, his wife Hendrickje, together with their son Titus, opened an art business in 1660, hiring Rembrandt as an employee. Orders began to come in again, and the master returned to some degree of prosperity. But, true to form, he refused to retouch his works, which led to stormy relations with his commissioners. In 1661, Rembrandt was commissioned to paint the new town hall, but this work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was deemed unacceptable and sent back to its author. Hendrickje died in 1663, followed by Titus in 1668. Rembrandt died a year after his son, in October 1669, ruined, solitary and in general indifference. He is buried like the poor in a tomb in Westerkerk, a Dutch Protestant Reformed church in Amsterdam.
The Jewish Bride
Among his last works, completed just before his death, are several self-portraits, including The Jewish Bride (c. 1665-1669), considered one of his greatest masterpieces. The latter work was given its nickname in the 19th century when a Dutch art collector thought he had identified a father and daughter on their wedding day. This interpretation is no longer current, and the identity of the couple is uncertain due to the lack of anecdotal detail in the painting. There has been much speculation about this couple. Did Rembrandt paint his son Titus and his wife? Or is it the Amsterdam Jewish poet Miguel de Barrios and his wife Abigaël de Pina? Or could it be Old Testament characters Rembrandt wanted to portray: Abraham and Sarah, Boaz and Ruth, or Isaac and Rebecca?
The Marten and Oopjen diptych
Another mythical couple: the diptych Marten and Oopjen, painted in Amsterdam in 1634 by the then 28-year-old Rembrandt, at the request of the young married couple, Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit. In 2016, these two exceptional works were jointly acquired by the Dutch and French governments for 160 million euros. This unique partnership enables the two countries to share ownership and exhibition of these masterpieces, alternately at the Rijksmuseum and the Louvre. Both over two meters high, these paintings have remained in private ownership for almost 400 years. Their sale gave rise to a veritable media battle between the two museums, which eventually came to an agreement and, above all, raised the sum requested. The portraits were then renovated in 2017. Thanks to scanner images, the curators discovered that the two portraits had been painted at the same time - contrary to what had previously been thought - and that Rembrandt had covered with a large curtain what he had initially imagined as a porch or rounded doorway, no doubt to give the diptych greater unity. What's more, the study has been taken so far that we now know that the canvas for both paintings comes from the same single fabric, the widest Rembrandt ever used.
The 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death and his posterity
Two years after this restoration worthy of a police investigation, in 2019, the Netherlands celebrates the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death. The Rijksmuseum is offering the public what is the largest museum collection of Rembrandt's works: four hundred works. The Night Watch, the enigmaticJewish Bride and the portraits of Marten and Oopjen are among the masterpieces on display. Since July 2019, La Ronde de nuit has also been restored for visitors to see at the Rijksmuseum. Starting with the observation that certain elements of the painting were discolored (such as the dog in the lower right-hand corner), the restorers called in scientists equipped with instruments capable of obtaining very high-resolution images. It had been more than 40 years since the painting had been restored, following vandalism in 1975 when it was slashed with a knife. The painting was also the subject of Peter Greenaway's biographical film La Ronde de nuit, released in 2008. The film is set in Amsterdam in 1654: Rembrandt wakes up with a start, having just dreamt that he is blind. This nightmare takes him back 12 years, to 1642, when he was commissioned to paint. Today, the posterity of this painting is unanimous: Rembrandt can finally rest in peace.
Today, Rembrandt's most important works can be admired at the Rijksmuseum, at the Mauritshuis, which holds The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp and several self-portraits, and in France, at the Louvre, where an entire room is dedicated to him, with works from his mature years, these include his Bathsheba at the Bath Holding a Letter from David of 1654, a sublime nude with an entirely imagined face, painted from life and inspired by the biblical story of David's love for Bathsheba, who is already married and will be punished by God. For several years now, the Rembrandt Experience, close to the Leidseplein, has been offering a fun way to relive the artist's life in 5D.
