Not but that they still painted Scriptural subjects. Altar-pieces were wanted occasionally, and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a cabinet Madonna. But there is just this difference between men of this modern period, and the Florentines or Venetians-that, whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane." Rubens was thus a man of the world. When a boy he was for some time page in the family of a countess at Brussels. But his bent towards art was too strong to be gainsaid. When only twenty-two he was already a master-painter in the Antwerp Guild. Two years later he went to Italy, and for eight years he was in the service of the Duke of Mantua. An excellent Latin scholar, he was also proficient in French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. These gifts procured him diplomatic employment. In 1603 "the Fleming," as they called him, was sent on a mission to Spain. In 1608 news of his mother's illness reached him, and he hastened home, when he was appointed court-painter to the Archduke Albert, then Governor of the Netherlands. In 1620 he visited Paris, at the invitation of Mary de' Medici (a sister of the Duchess of Mantua). In 1628 he was sent on a mission to Philip IV. of Spain, and in the following year he was sent to Charles I. of England. Here he was knighted, and was given an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge. But wherever he went Rubens continued to paint, and his diplomacy he considered as mere recreation. "The painter Rubens," he is reported to have said of himself, "amuses himself with being ambassador." "So said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of his art in its felicity." How hard he laboured is known by the enormous number of his works-between 2000 and 3000-which still survive, by the large fortune he amassed, and by the great request in which his talents were. "Whatever work of his I may require," wrote a celebrated Antwerp printer, "I have to ask him six months before, so as that he may think of it at leisure, and do the work on Sundays or holidays; no week days of his could I pretend to get under 100 florins."

Finally, it is interesting to know that his success and his courtly life were consistent both with gentleness and goodness. Like other great artists, Rubens is conspicuous for "a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. . . His letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. He was an honourable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in habits of life, highbred, learned, and discreet. His affection for his mother was great, his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing." He was twice married. In 1626 his first wife, Isabella Brant, died. Four years later he married Helena Fourment, a beautiful girl of sixteen, the living incarnation of his feminine type. "At the time of his second marriage Rubens was fifty-three years of age. He led a serious, happy, retired life. His leisure time he devoted to his family, to a few friends, to his correspondence, his collections (lately discovered in Paris), and

his rides" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15, sec. ii. ch. ii. § 12; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. i. § 2; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. i. §17; vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 21, pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 1-9; On the Old Read, i. 185, 186; Stones of Venice, vol. i. App. 15; Wauters, The Flemish School, p. 214).

For the story of the Sabine women see under XIII. 644, P. 330. Notice the daring anachronism of the painter, who represents the antique Sabines as coarse women in Flemish costumes of the seventeenth century, struggling in the arms of bearded ruffians.

152, AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

Aart van der Neer (Dutch: 1619-1682).

Aart (Arthur) van der Neer is the Dutch painter of "the hues and harmonies of evening." Before the door of the country house are a lady and gentleman, who have come out as if to gaze on one of such effects. This is one of the largest of his pictures—which is the more valuable as the figures are by Cuyp, whose name is inscribed on the pail; but 239, p. 214, is perhaps more attractive.

672. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1607-1669). Rembrandt Harmens-called also Van Rhyn, from having been born on the banks of the Rhine-has a place apart by himself in the history of painting. He is the great master of the school of chiaroscuro -of those, that is, who strive at representing not the colours of objects, but the contrasts of light and shade upon them. "If it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which can be represented, from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, misrepresented. ... Rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety." "" 1 Rembrandt "sacrifices the light and colour of five

1 To further understand Rembrandt's principle of choice, contrast that of Veronese. "He, on the contrary, chooses to represent the great relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the earth beneath them. He holds it more important to show how a figure stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or purple, or

For both the light and "The whole question,

sixths of his picture." This is inevitable. the darkness of nature are inimitable by art. therefore, is simply whether you will be false at one end of the scale or at the other, that is, whether you will lose yourself in light or in darkness. What Veronese does is to make his colours true to nature as far as he can. What Rembrandt does is to make his contrasts true, never minding his colours-with the result that in most cases not one colour is absolutely_true.”1 An exception however must be made. For he often "chose subjects in which the real colours were very nearly imitable,—as single heads with dark backgrounds, in which nature's highest light was little above his own."

Rembrandt's principle of light and shade thus led him to often choose such portraits, but its influence did not end there. His love of darkness led also to a loss of the spiritual element, and was itself the reflection of a sombre mind. He was particularly fond of dark scenes, lighted only by some small spot of light. "To Rembrandt," says a former Keeper of the National Gallery (Wornum: Epochs of Painting, p. 421, ed. 1864), "belongs the glory of having first embodied in art and perpetuated these rare and beautiful effects of nature." Mr. Ruskin takes up this sentence, and replies: "such effects are indeed rare in nature; but they are not rare, absolutely. The sky, with the sun in it, does not usually give the impression of being dimly lighted through a circular hole; but you may observe a very similar effect any day in your coal-cellar. The light is not Rembrandtesque on the current, or banks, of a river; but it is on those of a drain. Colour is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one. And without denying the pleasantness of the mode of progression, which Mr. Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes as attainable in a background of Rembrandt's, 'you stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another,'* I cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the

white figure, it separates itself in clear discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity of light all this, I say, he feels to be more important than showing merely the exact measure of the spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16).

1 Yet Rembrandt's pictures are often more deceptive-look more like reality-than others which are really more true. Why? It is because 'people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed by force of light than truth of colour. . . . Give them the true contrast of light, and they will not observe the false local colour" (Modern Painters, vol. iv. pt. v. ch. iii. § 12).

2 See 45, p. 230, the picture on which Hazlitt makes this remark,

speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could seeby rushlight." One may see something of this darkness of choice in the way in which the light is gone out in religious pictures by Rembrandt-in the "abysses of obscurity" in 45, p. 230, in the rushlight Adoration of the Shepherds in 47, p. 233. Mr. Ruskin associates it also with a characteristic contrast in his conception of domestic life. Veronese painted himself and his family as worshipping the Madonna. Rubens painted himself and his family as performing the Madonna. "Rembrandt has also (at Dresden) painted himself and his wife in a state of ideal happiness. He sits at supper with his wife on his knee, flourishing a glass of champagne, with a roast peacock on the table.” "It is the best work I know of all he has left; and it marks his speciality with entire decision. It is, of course, a dim candle-light ; and the choice of the sensual passions as the things specially and for ever to be described and immortalised out of his own private life and love, is exactly that 'painting the foulest thing by rushlight' which I have stated to be the enduring purpose of his mind."

Rembrandt's life is not at variance with what has thus been said of his art. The greatness of his technical skill is indisputable, as is also the sense of power about his work. These two characteristics are reflected in his life-a life of hard labour, yet of a certain aloofness, and of restricted vision. He was born at Leyden, the son of a miller, and from a very early age set himself to etch and sketch the common things he saw about the mill. In 1631 he moved

to Amsterdam, and lived a quiet burgher life. He never travelled, even within Holland; but his taste in art must have been catholic. He formed a large collection of old armour, engravings, and pictures, which included works by Giorgione and Palma Vecchio. There is no evidence in support of the greed with which he has been too long credited. Rather was he too extravagant. His wife, Saskia van Ulenburg, whom he married in 1634, had brought him a considerable fortune. She died in 1642. In 1654 he had a child by his servant, and two years later he was declared bankrupt. His collections were sold and he was stripped even of his table linen. In his life, as in his art, there were heavy shadows; but the light shines out in his undaunted perseverance. For it was in the later years of his life, when he was moving from one humble abode to another, that some of his greatest works were produced (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. iii. §§.11-19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 10; On the Old Road, i. 498-505).

"His father's mill was, doubtless, Rembrandt's school; the strong and solitary light, with its impenetrable obscurity around, the characteristic feature of many of Rembrandt's best works, is just such an effect as would be produced by the one ray admitted into the lofty chamber of a mill from the small window, its ventilator" (Wornum: Epochs of Painting, 1864, p. 419).

Q

"This portrait, dated 1640, describes the man well-strong and robust, with powerful head, firm and compressed lips and determined chin, with heavy eyebrows, separated by a deep vertical furrow, and with eyes of keen penetrating glance,altogether a self-reliant man, who would carry out his own ideas, careless whether his popularity waxed or waned” (J. F. White in Encyclopædia Britannica).

243. AN OLD MAN (dated 1659).

See under 672, p. 223.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1607-1640). A noble picture of the dignity of old age. 49. THE PORTRAIT OF RUBENS.

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641).

Sir Anthony Van Dyck, the most distinguished of Rubens's pupils, is one of the many great artists whose gifts showed themselves almost from birth. He was the son of a glass-painter; at ten he had already begun to paint; at fifteen he entered Rubens's studio, and at nineteen he was himself a "master." For five years (1620-25) he was travelling and painting in Italy, with letters of introduction from Rubens; and on his return to Antwerp he at once became the great court-painter of his time. Queens visited him in his studio, and the nobility of three nations considered it an honour to be painted by him. He twice visited London-in 1620 and 1627, before he finally settled there in 1632. On his first presentation to Charles I. he obtained permission to paint the king and queen. He was appointed painter to the court, was knighted, and received a pension of £200. A town-house was given him at Blackfriars, and a country house at Eltham. He 'always went magnificently dressed, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so good a table in his apartment that few princes were more visited or better served." For seven years Van Dyck worked at the portraits of the English aristocracy with indefatigable industry. Nearly half of all his known pictures are in this country (a large collection of them was brought together at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887), but in the National Gallery he is at present incompletely represented there are no pictures by him here either of women or of children, in both of which he excelled. The last two years of his life were mainly spent in travelling with his young wife, the granddaughter of Lord Ruthven. He died when only forty-two, and was buried in the old church of St. Paul's.

The characteristics of Van Dyck's art will easily be gathered from the circumstances of his life. He is essentially the painter of princes. No more in him than in the other later Flemish artists is there anything romantic, anything spiritual. The difference between him and Teniers, for instance, is accidental rather than essential. They lived, says Mr. Ruskin, "the gentle at court, the simple in the pot-house; and