REMBRANDT 243 missions less numerous in Leyden than in Amsterdam. Often in the latter town his services were required ; so often, indeed, that at last, about 1631, when he was just twenty-five, he settled there permanently and set up a studio of his own. Success was his from the start. Sitter after sitter sought him out in his house on the Bloemgracht ; the most distinguished men in the town hastened to patronize him. His work was liked by the burghers whom he painted, its strength was felt by artists, whose canvases soon showed its influence. Admir- ers crowded to his studio. He had not been in Amsterdam a twelvemonth when, before he was yet twenty-six, he was entrusted with an order of more than usual importance. This was the portrait of Dr. Tulp and his class of surgeons : the famous " Lesson in Anatomy " now in the Gallery at The Hague. The sub- ject at the time was very popular. Many artists, De Keyser among others, had already, in painting prominent surgeons, placed them around the subject they were dissecting ; indeed, this was the arrangement insisted upon by the surgeons themselves, and, as there seems to have been no limit to their vanity, " Lessons in Anatomy " were almost as plentiful in Holland as " Madonnas" in Umbria. Rembrandt in his composition was simply adhering to accepted tradition. It is true that he instilled life into a group hitherto, on other painters' canvases, stiff and perfunctory ; but, though the picture was a wonderful production for a man of his years, it is not to be ranked with his greatest work. Commissions now poured in still faster. It was at this time he painted several of his best known portraits : the " Master Shipbuilder and his Wife," at present in Buckingham Palace ; that simply marvellous old woman at the Na- tional Gallery in London, made familiar to everyone by countless photographs and other reproductions ; the man in ruff and woman in coif at the Bruns- wick Museum ; and a score of others scarce less important. With increasing popularity, he was able to command his own prices, so that only a part of his time was it necessary for him to devote to the portraits which were his chief source of income. During the leisure he reserved, he painted biblical subjects, ever his delight, and made etchings and drawings, to-day the most prized treas- ures in the world's great galleries. As in Leyden, he drew about him students ; a few, notably Ferdinand Bol and Christophe Paudiss, destined, in their turn, to gain name and fame. Indifferent to social claims and honors — an indifference the burghers, his patrons, found it hard to forgive, his one amusement was in col- lecting pictures and engravings, old stuffs and jewels, and every kind of bric-a- brae, until his house in Amsterdam was a veritable museum. This amusement later was to cost him dear. Four years after the " Lesson in Anatomy " was painted, when he was at the height of prosperity, in 1634, he married Saskia van Uylenborch, the Saskia of so many an etching and picture. She was of a good Frisian family, and brought with her a dowry of no mean proportions. Rembrandt's marriage made small changes in his way of living. Into the society, so ready to receive him, he never went, not even now that he had a wife to introduce. It bored him, and he was no toady to waste his time fawning upon possible patrons. " When I desire to rest
