Rembrandt: Portraits and Pain
1642 AD
1642 1642
04.55E52.24N
ART

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
	One of the greatest paintings of Rembrandt Harmens Van Rijn was "The Night Watch" (1642). Ironically, it was also the one that virtually ended his portrait painting business.
	At the request of 16 members of the civic guards (the Dutch army), Rembrandt painted "The Night Watch." It showed a dramatic scene with 29 life-sized civic guards coming out of their clubhouse. The only problem was that of the 16 guards paying for the picture, only two could recognize themselves in the painting.
	Rembrandt was a master of portraits. He could capture the texture of skin, fur, cloth, the likeness of a person and the character behind the face. But after the uproar over "The Night Watch," Rembrandt got few more orders for portraits.
	The picture that led to his success as a portrait painter was "The Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp" (1632), which shows Tulp lifting a red strand of muscle from a corpse while his students look on in fascination. As with many of his paintings, the background is dark, but the faces--each one a masterpiece--are light.
	That Rembrandt didn't get many orders after "The Night Watch" didn't really concern him. All four of his daughters died in infancy, then his beloved wife Saskia had died in 1642. He was not really interested in portraits any more. Instead, his art took a quieter, sadder direction.
	Though he had always favored biblical scenes, he began to do them more frequently, but not using the idealized figures and settings of the Renaissance. For example, he put Mary and Jesus in a simple carpenter's shop, and in "Christ with the Sick Around Him" he took as models broken people from the poor sections of Amsterdam.
	Unfortunately, Rembrandt had added to his problems by spending money freely. By 1656 he was bankrupt and all his possessions were sold. He lived in a poor part of town until he died in poverty in 1699, a year after the death of his only son, Titus.
