Rembrandt Biography (Dutch painter and printmaker) 1606–1669

Keep Reading: (born July 15, 1606, Leiden, Netherlands—died October 4, 1669, Amsterdam) Dutch painter and printmaker, one of the greatest storytellers in the history of art, possessing an exceptional ability to render people in their various moods and dramatic guises. Rembrandt is also known as a painter of light and shade and as an artist who favoured an uncompromising realism that would lead some critics to claim that he preferred ugliness to beauty.

Early in his career and for some time, Rembrandt painted mainly portraits. Although he continued to paint—and etch and, occasionally, draw—portraits throughout his career, he did so less frequently over time. Roughly one-tenth of his painted and etched oeuvre consists of studies of his own face as well as more formal self-portraits, a fact that has led to much speculation.

The core of Rembrandt's oeuvre, however, consists of biblical and—to a much lesser extent—historical, mythological, and allegorical “history pieces,” all of which he painted, etched, or sketched in pen and ink or chalk. Seen over his whole career, the changes in Rembrandt's style are remarkable. His approach to composition and his rendering of space and light—like his handling of contour, form, and colour, his brushwork, and (in his drawings and etchings) his treatment of line and tone—are subject to gradual (or sometimes abrupt) transformation, even within a single work. The painting known as Night Watch (1640/42) was clearly a turning point in his stylistic development. These changes are not the result of an involuntary evolution; rather they should be seen as documenting a conscious search in pictorial and narrative respects, sometimes in discussion, as it were, with his great predecessors.

Rembrandt quickly achieved renown among Dutch art lovers and an art-buying public for his history paintings and etchings, as well as his portraits and self-portraits. His unusual etchings brought him international fame during his lifetime, and his drawings, which in fact were done as practice exercises or as studies for other works, were also collected by contemporary art lovers.

According to the myth that evolved after his death, Rembrandt died poor and misunderstood. It is true that by the end of his life his realism had been supplanted by Classicism and had become unfashionable in Holland. Nevertheless, his international reputation among connoisseurs and collectors only continued to rise. Certain artists in 18th-century Germany and Venice even adopted his style. He was venerated during the Romantic era and was considered a forerunner of the Romantic movement; from that point he was regarded as one of the greatest figures in art history. In The Netherlands itself, his fortunes have once again risen, and he has become a symbol of both greatness and Dutch-ness.

Early years
Rembrandt was the fourth of 6 surviving children out of 10. Unlike many painters of his time, he did not come from a family of artists or craftsmen; his father, Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn (1568–1630), was a miller. His mother, Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck (1568–1640), came from a family of bakers.

The first name Rembrandt was—and still is—extremely rare. It is akin to more common Dutch first names such as Remmert, Gerbrand, or IJsbrand. The way Rembrandt inscribed his name on his work evolved significantly. As a young man he signed his work only with the monogram RH (Rembrant Harmenszoon, “son of Harmen”); from 1626/27, with RHL; and in 1632, with RHL van Rijn (the L in the monogram presumably standing for Leidensis, “from Leiden,” the town in which he was born). At age 26, he began to sign his work with his first name only, Rembrant (ending only with a -t); from early 1633 onward until his death, he spelled his name Rembrandt (with -dt) and signed his works that way. It has been suggested that he began using his first name as his signature because he considered himself the equal of the great artists of the 15th and 16th centuries—Michelangelo (Michelangelo Buonarroti), Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), and Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) were also generally known by their first names.

Like most Dutch children of his day, Rembrandt attended elementary school ( 1612–16), after which, from roughly 1616 to 1620, he attended the Latin School in Leiden, where biblical studies and classics were the main subjects taught. The school's emphasis on oratory skills may have contributed to his ability to “stage” the figures in scenes depicted in his history paintings, drawings, and etchings. It is not clear whether Rembrandt completed his course of study at the Latin School. His first biographer, Jan Janszoon Orlers (1570–1646), provided a laudatory half-page biography of Rembrandt within his Beschrijvinge der stadt Leyden (1641; “Description of the Town of Leiden”). There Orlers wrote that Rembrandt was taken out of school prematurely and, at his own request, was sent to be trained as a painter. The fact that Rembrandt was enrolled in Leiden University on May 20, 1620, does not necessarily contradict this. Whether for tax reasons or simply because they had attended the Latin School, it was not unusual for Leiden boys to be registered as students without being expected to attend any lectures. The extent of Rembrandt's intellectual development and any possible influence this might have had on his work remain matters of speculation.

From approximately 1620 to 1624/25, Rembrandt trained as an artist. As was quite common in his time, he had two masters in succession. Rembrandt's first master was the Leiden painter Jacob van Swanenburgh (1571–1638), with whom, according to Orlers, he remained for about three years. Van Swanenburgh must have taught him the basic skills and imparted the knowledge necessary for the profession. He was a specialist in architectural pieces and in scenes of hell and the underworld, which called for skill in painting fire and its reflections on the surrounding objects. In Rembrandt's time this skill was considered distinct and demanding. It may well be that Rembrandt's early exposure to this kind of pictorial problem underlies his lasting interest in the effects of light.

Rembrandt's second teacher, Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), lived in Amsterdam. According to Orlers, Rembrandt stayed with him for six months. Working with Lastman, who was well known at that time as a history painter, must have helped Rembrandt gain the knowledge and skill necessary to master that genre. History painting involved placing various figures from biblical, historical, mythological, or allegorical scenes in complex settings. In the 17th-century hierarchy of the various genres, history painting held the highest position because it required a complete command of all subjects, from landscape to architecture, from still-life to drapery, from animals to, above all, the human figure, in a wide range of postures, expressions, and costumes. One Rembrandt biographer, Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719), also mentions another Amsterdam history painter, Jakob Pynas ( 1585–1650), as one of Rembrandt's teachers. (In 1718 Houbraken wrote the most extensive early biography and characterization of Rembrandt as an artist, although it was mixed with spurious anecdotes.)

On the basis of stylistic arguments one could speculate on the impact that Jan Lievens (1607–74) may have had on Rembrandt during his training. Lievens, one year younger than Rembrandt and originally a child prodigy, was already a full-fledged artist by the time Rembrandt must have decided to become a painter. Although scholars know for certain only that Rembrandt and Lievens worked closely together for some years after Rembrandt had returned to Leiden about 1625, following his training with Lastman, the contacts between these two Leiden boys may have begun earlier. However, no trace of Rembrandt's student exercises has survived.

The Leiden period (1625–31)
Over the course of 1625, Rembrandt settled in Leiden as an independent master. During the following six years, he laid the foundations for many of his subsequent works and preoccupations. His earliest paintings relied heavily on Lastman's work. In several instances, he took apart, as it were, the colourful compositions by Lastman and reassembled them into new compositions. (Later, although in a less drastic fashion, Rembrandt's own pupils would also produce variations on the basis of Rembrandt's own works.) For an aspiring painter, this was one of the typical methods employed to develop a personal style under a master's guidance. Given the fact, however, that Rembrandt painted his variations on Lastman's prototypes after he had returned to Leiden as an independent young master, one can speculate that Rembrandt actually may have been trying to emulate his former teacher by choosing the latter's subjects but completely “rephrasing” them.

During his Leiden period, Rembrandt's production as a painter was mainly devoted to small-scale history paintings and tronies (single figures in historicizing, Oriental, or imaginary costumes that connote old age, piety, soldierly bravery, the Orient, transience, and so on). Tronies were not meant to be portraits, although individuals must have posed for them (among them Rembrandt himself, in the mirror). Also during this period, Rembrandt may have shared a studio with Lievens, who, like Rembrandt, had received his final training with Lastman—although six years earlier. The two young painters experimented with the consistency of paint, attempting to use variations in the paint surface to render different materials. It may well be that Lievens had a stronger influence on Rembrandt in these early years than vice versa. The fact that, about 1630, they both several times painted the same subject (such as the Raising of Lazarus) might suggest that they were competing with each other.

In 1628 or 1629 Rembrandt finished the Judas Repentant and, among other works, painted The Artist in His Studio. After amazingly rapid changes in style from 1625 onward, Rembrandt reached a first major peak in his artistic development in the late 1620s.

The paintings he created soon after leaving Lastman still have a waxworks quality, with evenly lit, colourful figures acting in a clearly organized space. The revolutionary change that took place in Rembrandt's style between about 1627 and 1629 involved the role of light. By concentrating the light and by exaggerating the diminuendo of the force of light in relation to the distance from the light source, Rembrandt arrived at what could crudely be termed “spotlight” effects. In order to create convincing light effects, Rembrandt—like Caravaggio, his great Italian precursor in this field—had to compensate by leaving large areas shrouded in shadow.

In 1628, in particular in the Peter and Paul Disputing, Rembrandt developed a method by which the lit elements in the painting are basically clustered in one area, in such a manner that little shadow is needed to separate the various forms. By assembling light hues of yellow, blue, pink, green, and other colours, he developed a system of bevriende kleuren (“kindred or related colours”). This area of the painting was surrounded by coherent clusters of darker tones that occupied the foreground and background and especially the edges and corners of the work. Through this method Rembrandt not only created a concentrated, almost furnacelike, intensity of the light, but he also obtained a strong unity in his composition. This unity enabled the viewer's eye to grasp the image in one glance, before focusing on the details.

In order to achieve this result, Rembrandt had to sacrifice strong, saturated colours, since these would impair the desired effect. He also had to sacrifice much detail in order to maintain tonal unity throughout the painting. One could speculate that these pictorial dilemmas eventually led to an artistic crisis that may have become manifest during the work on Night Watch (), which was in fact meant to be a scene lit by daylight.

Other developments in Rembrandt's Leiden period, such as his activity as an etcher and a teacher, would also prove to be important for his whole artistic career.

Etching
About 1628 Rembrandt made his first etchings. Unlike drawing, etching is not a natural counterpart to painting, and his decision to begin etching meant taking a significant new direction in his career. Much of his international fame during his lifetime would be based on the widely disseminated prints he produced from the 300 or so etchings he made over the course of his career.

Analysis of Rembrandt's early etched oeuvre gives the impression that he was basically self-taught in this field. Whereas Rembrandt's contemporaries adopted the regular, almost stylized manner of applying lines and hatchings that could be found in the much more common copper engravings, Rembrandt almost from the outset used a much freer technique, which at first strikes the viewer as uncontrolled, even nervous. Thanks to this new technique, however, he succeeded in developing a method of working that appears partly sketchlike, yet which could also be described as painterly. The painterly quality of his etchings is mainly due to the way in which he achieved an extraordinarily suggestive play of light and dark and how he created a convincing sense of atmospheric space using different methods of hatching.

As early as the 18th century, specialists had thoroughly described and explored Rembrandt's etched oeuvre, mainly for the benefit of print collectors. In the process, much attention was paid to the different stages—the so-called “states”—through which many of Rembrandt's etchings evolved as well as to the striking variety of papers upon which the etchings were printed. The latter fact led to the general belief that Rembrandt printed his etchings himself. About 1990 the technique of X-ray radiography was applied to the watermarks on the paper; this technique has made it possible to reconstruct editions of prints and, as a result, to obtain greater insight into Rembrandt's studio practice in this field.

Teaching
From 1628 to 1663, Rembrandt had pupils. Gerrit Dou (1613–75), who was later in life noted as a painter of meticulously executed genre paintings and portraits, was probably the first. Over the years Rembrandt's fame attracted many young men—some from abroad—who were ambitious to study with him once they had completed their basic training elsewhere. It seems that Rembrandt never took beginners. Great talents such as Govaert Flinck, Carel Fabritius, and Aert de Gelder were among these students. Scholars know of the existence of Rembrandt's individual pupils mainly by chance, since the official registers of painters' trainees have been lost in both Leiden and Amsterdam. Only a rough estimate of the number of his pupils is possible. Over his entire career as a teacher (between 1628 and 1663) there must certainly have been 50 or so, and possibly many more. The German artist Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88), who lived in Amsterdam from 1637 to about 1645, referred to “countless pupils” who studied and worked with Rembrandt.

A pupil's parents had to pay Rembrandt an annual tuition fee of 100 guilders, a substantial sum, especially since Rembrandt, contrary to custom, did not provide boarding for these young men. According to von Sandrart, this fee, coupled with the sale of his pupils' works, added substantially to Rembrandt's income. It is likely that a number of Rembrandt's pupils—including Isack Jouderville (1613–before 1648), an orphan from Leiden—stayed on as studio assistants for some time. Rembrandt's students learned, as was common practice in 17th-century studios, by copying their master's works and, later, by painting and drawing more or less free variations based on them. A passage in Houbraken's biography of Rembrandt, confirmed by an archival document from 1658, states that pupils worked in an attic in separate cubicles partitioned by sailcloth or paper.

First Amsterdam period (1631–35/36)
In 1631 Rembrandt entered a business relationship with Hendrick Uylenburgh (1584 or 1589– 1660), an Amsterdam entrepreneur in paintings who had a large workshop that painted portraits, carried out restorations, and produced copies, among other activities. Rembrandt apparently had already planned or was inspired by Uylenburgh to leave Leiden, then in decline, for Amsterdam, which was thriving.

Settling in another town and there becoming a master of the guild—which was essential, since in principle this status alone gave one the formal right to sell work in that town—was not, however, a simple matter. It is known from the guild archives of several towns that a master aspiring to settle elsewhere had first to serve an obligatory period of one or two years in the workshop of a local master before he could be admitted to the guild. This may be the reason that Rembrandt moved into Uylenburgh's workshop and, over the course of about four years, worked in his service, probably as head of the workshop.

Whether Rembrandt had already moved to Amsterdam in 1631 is a point of controversy. Some Rembrandt specialists defend the idea that for several years he commuted between Leiden and Amsterdam. The two towns were then separated by the Haarlemmermeer (a large lake since drained), traversable by regular transport service. It is known, however, that Rembrandt became a member of the Amsterdam St. Luke's guild only in 1634, the same year that he married Uylenburgh's niece, Saskia van Uylenburgh (1612–42).

Portraits
From 1631 to 1635, in Uylenburgh's workshop, Rembrandt produced a substantial number of portraits (mainly pairs of pendants) and some group portraits, such as The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632). He must have conquered the Amsterdam portrait market rapidly. Partly relying on his experience as a history painter, he succeeded in producing much livelier portraits than those created by the specialized portrait painters who had dominated the Amsterdam scene before his arrival. By limiting the amount of detail and using simple but dynamic contours, Rembrandt avoided distracting the viewer's attention. He led the eye primarily to the face and the suggested movement of the figure. He was also exceptionally good at rendering human skin convincingly.

There is doubt, however, about Rembrandt's ability to capture the likeness of his sitters. Constantijn Huygens, a Dutch diplomat, intellectual, and art connoisseur who discusses Rembrandt in an autobiography about his youth, wrote some epigrammatic Latin verses occasioned by a portrait of one of his friends that Rembrandt had painted in 1632. In these verses, he wittily mocked the inadequacy of the portrait's likeness. The doubt that Rembrandt's portraiture was accurate is only exacerbated when one compares his authentic self-portraits with one another. The physiognomic differences between these images are considerable. In cases where it is possible to compare a portrait by Rembrandt with portraits of the same model by other painters, one has the impression that the likeness produced by Rembrandt was the least accurate. This seems to be the case, for instance, in his portrait of the famous, banned Remonstrant preacher Johannes Wtenbogaert (1577–1644), who was also portrayed by Michiel Janszoon van Miereveld and Jacob Adriaenszoon Backer.

Stylistic analysis of his portraits reveals that Rembrandt occasionally had others assist him to a varying degree in the painting of portraits, as indeed was the custom in many portrait studios. For example, Wtenbogaert's portrait session with Rembrandt is recorded in a written document; back in Holland for some weeks, the preacher recorded in his diary that on April 13, 1633, he posed for Rembrandt during only that one day. Parts of this portrait, such as the preacher's hands, were clearly painted by a studio assistant, no doubt after the sitter had left the studio.

Rembrandt and religion
In his years with Uylenburgh, Rembrandt also made history paintings, mainly biblical scenes. A number of these works, in the form of grisailles, were apparently done with an ambitious series of prints in mind, which together were to constitute a Passion series (unfinished). The fact that Rembrandt represented so many biblical stories, evidently basing them on a strict reading of Old and New Testament texts, has always given rise to speculation as to the nature of his religious beliefs and denomination.

In fact, it is still unknown whether Rembrandt belonged to any religious community or, if so, to which. Filippo Baldinucci, an Italian abbot and art connoisseur, claimed in 1686 that Rembrandt was an Anabaptist. But Rembrandt could not have belonged to the Anabaptist brotherhood (as Uylenburgh did, for example) since he had his own children baptized as infants (a practice specifically repudiated by Anabaptists). In other respects too, such as his manner of dress, he did not fit the profile of this sectarian type of Protestantism. Because Rembrandt's father belonged to the Reformed Church, while his mother was and remained a Roman Catholic, it may well be that their son was one of those Christians who deliberately avoided membership in any congregation. There was a ban at the time on the open practice of Catholic rites and, during Rembrandt's Leiden years, a fierce antagonism between the Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant communities (the issue being the Calvinist doctrine of predestination). Rembrandt may have preferred not to take sides.

In a self-portrait of 1661, Rembrandt depicted himself as St. Paul. This could perhaps be seen as an indication that he was among those who were deliberately opposed to religious antagonisms as such: in the Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul had warned against sectarian tendencies among the early Christians (1 Corinthians 3: 4–8; 21–22). It has also been suggested that Rembrandt believed that the gulf between Jews and Christians should be bridged. His close collaboration and possible friendship with the enlightened Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel, a strong advocate of reconciliation between Jews and Christians, may be an indication of this. That Rembrandt depicted so many Jews and Old Testament figures with such evident sympathy would further support this idea.

Rembrandt and Rubens
During Rembrandt's early Amsterdam period, the towering presence of Peter Paul Rubens was often felt. For a long time Rembrandt scholars tended to speak of Rubens's influence on Rembrandt whenever they attempted to explain the Rubensian elements in Rembrandt's work. But perhaps it is more appropriate to see Rembrandt as measuring himself against Rubens—as seen, for example, in a comparison of Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross (1632/33) with the print after Rubens's Descent from the Cross that Rembrandt unquestionably used. Such a comparison shows that Rembrandt had fundamentally transformed Rubens's heroic pathos into a powerful realism that evokes in the viewer a deep sense of involvement in Christ's suffering.

Rembrandt must, however, have taken Rubens as a model for his own artistic ambitions during this period. The aforementioned incomplete print series on the Passion, for which Rembrandt did various oil sketches to be executed by professional engravers, is one example of this, as it reflected the grandness of Rubens's various projects. In his early Amsterdam years Rembrandt also created a number of allegorical and history paintings with life-size figures that show an ambition reminiscent of that of Rubens. There are various indications that he must have painted such works on his own initiative. In fact, they may have served primarily as demonstration pieces. In this respect, Rembrandt contrasts sharply with Rubens, who produced his life-size allegories and history pieces with the help of a well-organized workshop for various European courts and churches.

It is documented that Rembrandt presented a large painting to Constantijn Huygens—who was at that time secretary to Prince Frederik Hendrik (1584–1647), the Dutch stadholder—as a gift in appreciation of Huygens's having acted as an intermediary with the stadholder's court. In view of the measurements documented, the painting concerned could have been either the Blinding of Samson or the Danaë (both from 1636) in its original form. It seems that Huygens did not accept the gift.

In sad contrast to Rubens, Rembrandt received only one substantial commission from a court. Huygens had seen Rembrandt's Leiden masterpiece, the Judas Repentant from 1628/29, in the studio and had greatly admired it for its narrative qualities. Acting as mediator to the court from roughly 1630 onward, he encouraged the prince to buy several paintings by Rembrandt. These purchases continued until 1646, and for the greater part they concerned paintings that together were to form a Passion series, with seven painted scenes from the life of Christ. Contacts with the stadholder's court, however, remained infrequent. If one were to assume that Rembrandt had ambitions to become a court painter (a role that Gerard van Honthorst would fulfill from his Utrecht workshop), one has to conclude that he failed. Moreover, while Rubens's works for the various courts generally involved large paintings with life-size figures, Rembrandt's Passion series for Frederik Hendrik consisted of modestly sized paintings crowded with small figures.

It is possible that some of Rembrandt's history paintings were bought by patrons of his portraiture, however. Sometimes history pieces are found listed in inventories that also list portraits by Rembrandt. This could well indicate that some sitters took advantage of the occasion to acquire one of Rembrandt's history paintings.

Second Amsterdam period (1635–42)
Growing fame
By the end of 1635, Rembrandt had left the house of Uylenburgh and established himself independently with his family. In 1639, after a period of living and working in rented dwellings, he bought a large house, built in 1606 and adjacent to the house in which he had begun his Amsterdam career with Uylenburgh. Rembrandt paid less than one third of the full price. The debt he left unpaid would later cause him great trouble. Rembrandt lived and worked in this house for almost 20 years. (Since 1906 it has been the home of the Rembrandt House Museum.)

Rembrandt must have experienced the years around 1640 as the high point of his career. His fame had spread rapidly. An Englishman traveling through the Netherlands in 1640 noted in his diary:

As for the art off Painting and the affection off these people [the Dutchmen] to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond them, there having bin in this Country Many excellent Men in thatt Faculty, some att Presentt, as Rimbrantt, etts.

In 1641 Orlers noted that Rembrandt was “so talented that he has since become one of the most esteemed painters of this century.”

In Rembrandt's day there was a fast-growing but distinct interest in art and artists, with a public that was designated as Liefhebbers van de Schilderkonst (“Lovers of the Art of Painting”). The art lover's main purpose was to understand paintings so as to be able to discuss them with other devotees and, preferably, with painters as well. Both the artist and the art lover of Rembrandt's day were inspired by the special relationship between Alexander the Great and his court painter, Apelles (as recounted by Pliny the Elder), and the almost equal footing that Titian enjoyed with Emperor Charles V. They admired and identified with these great role models of the past in terms of both the mutual relationship enjoyed by artist and patron and the importance each attached to the pursuit of the art of painting and to the deeper knowledge of that art—a mixture of art history, art theory, and technical understanding. Studio visits became popular. Texts written by artists for art lovers, and some by the latter themselves, give the impression that the insights gained from studio visits to a great extent concerned the “miracle” of creating an illusion of reality on a flat surface, the pictorial and technical means employed in creating that illusion, and the many aspects of the reality that was to be rendered—such as the natural grouping of the figures in a painting, the proportions of the figures and the expressiveness of their poses and gestures, the play of light and its reflections, the natural rendering of draped fabrics, the use of colour, and so on.