THE REMBRANDTS AT BURLINGTON HOUSE, 1889.
THE Winter Exhibition <jf the Old Masteivs at Burlington House, with its splendid aiTay of Rembrandts, has come and gone. Before the memory of it fades away, it may be useful to gather up the lessons it has taught us regarding the life and woi'k of the great Dutchman. Seldom, indeed, has such a collec- tion been brought together. In numbers it outstripped every European national gallery except St. Petersburg and Cassel, for in these rooms there were shown seven- teen examples of Rembrandt's art. The catalogue, indeed, gives eighteen, but one, fine j)ortrait as it is, must be held to be more than doubtful. In passing before this choice gathering, representa- tive of Rembrandt's whole career, one could not help hearing from intelligent bystanders such remarks as, ' I like this one, but I don't like that ; one can scai'cely believe them to be the work of the same painter.' The real wonder is all the other way. Would it not be strange if the tentative efforts of youth or the feeble work of declining age should rival the art of perfect manhood ? Every great master who has lived the full measure of the years allotted to man has passed, in liii art, through the successive stages of youth, manhood, and old age. In the case of Rembrandt his course has been traced through all its stages more clearly perhaps than that of any other master. What Ruskin did for Turner has been done during the last thirty years for Rembrandt by Vosmaei-, Burger, and Bode. The catalogue of his work is no longer a chaos ; it is a well-ordered scheme, every charactei'istic of each period having been noted with scientific accuracy and historical precision. Opinions may differ on points, for the styles sometimes overlap each other, or the painter harks back to a former manner; but in spite of these variations, it remains true that the secret of Rembrandt's life and development has been discovered. Out of the fine materials at our disposal let us learn what we can. The exigencies of hanging will i-equire us to wander to and fro, and we shall not always find the catalogue a trustworthy guide. Let us take fii'st the doubtful portrait. No. l6i. ' The Painter's Mother,' with the signature, Rembrandt, 1632, which, b_y the way, has a suspicious apjjearance, being unlike any of the well-known signatures. But clearly this old lady is not Rembrandt's mother, whose face is so familiar to us from the etching of l628 and the well-known authentic portraits of St. Petersburg and Vienna. Here we have a much younger woman, with a long, straight, well-formed nose, arched eye- brows and smooth forehead, altogether unlike the real mother, with her keen, penetrating eyes, the deep, vertical furrow, and irregular nose. But more than this, the portrait has not the tone oi- touch of Rem- brandt at any jteriod of his life. It is far in advance of his work of 1632, of which period we have examples in N'o. Ibo, ' A Young Man,' and No. o3, ' The Black Archer,' both of which are ' study ' portraits in his early Amsterdam manner, freer and bolder than that of Leyden, for he was ever studying effects of light and shade and mastering expression. His favourite model through life was himself, in every attitude and costume, from his early youth to full old age. We have in No. 1 1(), according to the catalogue, ' A Young Man,' painted in ItioO, but it is clearly a youthful Rembrandt, and painted in 1633, with all the precision of a miniature, yet resting on the manner of his great predecessor, Thomas de Keyser. The same tine, almost finical, touch is to be seen in the small picture. No. 119, 'The Good Samaritan,' which is almost an exact representation of his etching of the same subject, dated 1633. In its cool greyish-green colour it corresponds with his other known work of that date. In this pic- ture also should be noted the jewel-like touch in the golden ornaments of the blue velvet saddle-cloth, the work of the man who was at this very time teaching his first pupil, Gerard Douw, all that Douw ever knew. But with all this detail, the workmanship is spirited, and the pathos is entirelj' that of Rembrandt. He returned to the subject in the fulness of his power in l648, when he painted the superb picture which is now in the Louvre. In the same firm, precise manner, but on a large scale, we find the remarkable portraits of ' Jan Pelli- corne and his Wife ' (No. 156 and No. l65), not ' Palekan,' as in the catalogue, for ' Pellicorne ' has long been accepted by all authorities. They date from 1632 to l633. Smooth and clear in the lighting, they recall the influence of the older Dutch manner of Mirevelt and Moreelse. But with Rembrandt there was no stand- ing still. In l633 the staid impassive expression and firm precision of the Pellicornes give place to the larger manner and dramatic force of ' The Shipbuilder and his Wife,' No. 167, full of the momentary expression of arrested attention. Rembrandt was now entering on that short period of his life, the Slurm and Drang period, as Dr. Bode calls it, in which this intensity of expression is somewhat exaggerated. We see this in the portrait of himself. No. 159, painted about l635, not in 16-10, as stated in the catalogue. The stagey expression and the heavy loading of paint on the illu- minated side of the face are characteristic of this period, bold but uncertain, for he was trying to recon- cile minuteness of detail with a growing largeness of manner. With what precision and sureness of hand are the stray hairs painted as they escape from the mass of curls. He was now married to his fair young bride, Saskia, who appears in his work at every turn. How much more interesting does No. l63 become when we know that the latest research gives us in this picture not the ' Burgomaster Pancras,' but a some-
