. Sketches of great painters for young people. Rembrandt remainedserene, and showed no lack of courage. In 1656, theyear of his financial ruin, he painted an important workfor the guild of surgeons at Amsterdam. The picturewas nearly destroyed by fire during the last this same year he painted a strong picture, full ofpathos and power, called Jacob blessing the Sons ofJoseph. His portraits of himself at this time are inter-esting, and they show how lifes hard struggle had leftits marks on his face. The last years of Rembrandts life were passed in thegreatest obscurity. It is thought
. Sketches of great painters for young people. Rembrandt remainedserene, and showed no lack of courage. In 1656, theyear of his financial ruin, he painted an important workfor the guild of surgeons at Amsterdam. The picturewas nearly destroyed by fire during the last this same year he painted a strong picture, full ofpathos and power, called Jacob blessing the Sons ofJoseph. His portraits of himself at this time are inter-esting, and they show how lifes hard struggle had leftits marks on his face. The last years of Rembrandts life were passed in thegreatest obscurity. It is thought that after Hendrickasdeath, which must have been before 1661, he married athird time ; for a home and a fireside grew more andmore necessary to him. One of his most perfect worksbelongs to his last years. This is the Syndics of theCloth Hall. The painting was ordered by a corporationof cloth merchants for their place of reunion at Staal-hof, and each portrait in the picture is a masterly work. No man had been more falsely represented, before. 165 166 SKETCHES OF GREAT PAINTERS. the middle of this century, than Rembrandt. He wasbelieved to be a man of low tastes and a miser. Apicture was even painted, representing his death in thepresence of his chests of silver, which he wished to lethis dying eyes rest upon. Before the erection of thestatue of Rembrandt at Amsterdam, in 1852, manyresearches were made, and the documents discoveredthrew new light on his life, and disproved many thingsof which he had been accused. It is strange that by his portraits of himself he leftan unusual record of the changes in his countenance,and yet the story of his life is a sealed book. He is in-deed the King of Shadows, as he has been called. In1669 he died. The greatest painter of Holland was sounknown and so little appreciated at the time thatthe only recognition of his death is found in a churchregister. Rubens and Rembrandt were alike in the multitudeof the works they produced, and in their stron
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectpainters, bookyear190
