Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [41]
LATE STYLE. The year of “The Nightwatch,” 1642, marked a turning point in Rembrandt’s career. His dearly loved wife died prematurely (they had already lost three children in infancy) and he increasingly abandoned facile portraits with Baroque flourishes for a quieter, deeper style. In his mature phase, Rembrandt’s art became less physical, more psychological. He turned to Biblical subjects but treated them with more restraint. A palette of reds and browns came to dominate his paintings, as did solitary figures and a pervasive theme of loneliness. He pushed out the limits of chiaroscuro, using gradations of light and dark to convey mood, character, and emotion.
ETCHING. Rembrandt is considered the most accomplished etcher ever. He handled the needle with such skill and speed, his etchings convey the spontaneity of a sketch. One of his best-known etchings, “Six’s Bridge,” a landscape, was said to have been done between courses during dinner when a servant dashed to a nearby village to fetch mustard.
Nightwatch. “The Nightwatch,”an example of his early style, shows Rembrandt’s technical skill with lighting, composition, and color that earned it the reputation as one of the world’s greatest masterpieces.
The pointing was erroneously believed to be a night scene because of the darkened varnish that coated it. After cleaning, it was evident the scene took place in the day, at the dramatic moment the larger-than-life captain at center gives his militia company its marching orders.
Like Hals, Rembrandt revolutionized the clichéd group portrait from stiff, orderly rows to a lively moment of communal action, giving a sense of hectic activity through Baroque devices of light, movement, and pose. The captain and lieutenant seem on the verge of stepping into the viewer’s space, while contrasting light flashes and dark background keep the eye zig-zagging around the picture. The crisscrossing diagonals of pikes, lances, rifles, flag, drum, and staff make the scene appear chaotic, but — since they converge at right angles — they are part of a hidden geometric pattern holding everything together. Color harmonies of yellow in the lieutenant’s uniform and girl’s dress and red sash and musketeer’s uniform also unify the design.
According to legend, since each member of the company had paid equally to have his portrait immortalized, Rembrandt’s obscuring some faces appalled the sitters and marked the beginning of his decline from favor. A student of the painter wrote that Rembrandt paid “greater heed to the sweep of his imagination than to the individual portraits he was required to do, ” yet added that the painting was “so dashing in movement and so powerful” that other paintings beside it seemed “like playing cards. ”
Rembrandt, “The Nightwatch,” 1642, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
PAINTINGS. Rembrandt’s technique evolved from attention to minute detail to large-scale subjects given form through broad, thick smudges of paint. His first biographer wrote, “In the last years of his life, he worked so fast that his pictures, when examined from close by, looked as if they had been daubed with a bricklayer’s trowel.” He almost carved with pigment, laying on heavy impasto “half a finger” thick with a palette knife for light areas and scratching the thick, wet paint with the handle of the brush. This created an uneven surface that reflected and scattered the light, making it sparkle, while the dark areas were thinly glazed to enhance the absorption of light.
Rembrandt’s only known comment on art was in a letter, where he wrote that he painted “with the greatest and most deep-seated emotion.” The rest of his remarkable contribution to art he left on the canvas.
SELF-PORTRAITS
Rembrandt’s nearly 100 self-portraits over the course of forty years were an artistic