Rembrandt's life - Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, the Netherlands. His father was a miller who wanted the boy to follow a learned profession, but Rembrandt left the University of Leiden to study painting. His early work was devoted to showing lines, light and shade, and colour of the people he saw about him. Early in his career he began the studies of his own face and the more-formal self-portraits that make up almost a tenth of his painted and etched work. After moving to Amsterdam about 1631, he quickly became the city’s most fashionable portrait painter and a popular teacher. See paintings by Rembrandt >>

 

Like many prosperous men of his time, Rembrandt soon began to collect works of art, armour, costumes, and curiosities from far places. He used some of these objects as props in his paintings and etchings. The vast collection of drawings and prints that he amassed in the course of time made him familiar with works by artists distant in time and place, as well as by contemporaries. It was, in a way, a substitute for travel; he was quoted as saying, at the age of 23, that he could learn about Italian art without leaving Holland. In 1634, Rembrandt became a member of the Guild of St. Luke, a position which gained him more work, and the money he received from his various commissions for portraits and religious paintings allowed him to live the life of a wealthy man. In February of 1636, the couple's first born child, Rombartus, who was only a few weeks old, died.  The tragedy had a profound effect on Rembrandt, and while he and his wife were still very much in love, there were other troubles, such as many disputes between Saskia and her relatives over financial matters.  Two years later, the couple's newborn daughter Cornelia also dies, merely two weeks old.  Another two years pass, and another daughter is born, she too, suffers the same fate as the other children.

In 1641, Saskia gives birth to a son, Titus, who survives.  But in a cruel twist of fate, it is Saskia herself who dies in 1642, leaving Rembrandt in a hopelessly depressed state.  Rembrandt's life, like his art, is also fraught with contrast; for every bright moment, there seems to be an equally dark opposite, as if the artist were cursed into never living in peace.  It was also in 1942 that Rembrandt painted the most important work of his career, The Company of F.B. Cocq, or The Night Watch, as it is more widely known. Over the years, Rembrandt had become accustomed to living comfortably, if not beyond his means, and the debts had been piling up. Throughout the rest of his life, though personal troubles plagued Rembrandt, his artistic output was phenomenal and its subject matter (and tone) increasingly serene. He is credited with some 600 paintings, 300 etchings and 1,400 drawings. Of this total, nearly 100 works were self-portraits of a man on a continual journey of discovery. Rembrandt died soon after his son, on October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Westerkerk.
 

Email me even if its just for a chat I reply to you within the hour.

<< Back
Home