The year 1642 is remarkable for the great picture formerly known as the "Night Watch," but now more correctly as the "Sortie of the Banning Cock Company," in which 29 life-sized civic guards are introduced issuing pell-mell from their club house. Such gilds of arquebusiers had been painted admirably before by Ravesteyn and notably by Frans Hals, but Rembrandt determined to throw life and animation into the scene. The domi nant colour is the citron yellow uniform of the lieutenant, wear ing a blue sash, while a Titian-like red dress of a musketeer, the black velvet dress of the captain, and the varied green of the girl and drummer, all produce a rich and harmonious effect. The back ground has become dark and heavy, and the scutcheon on which the names are painted is scarcely to be seen.
But this year of great achievement was also the year of his great loss, for Saskia died in 1642, leaving Rembrandt her sole trustee for her son Titus, but with full use of the money till he should marry again or till the marriage of Titus. The words of the will express her confidence in her husband. With her death his life was changed. There is a pathetic sadness in his pictures of the Holy Family—a favourite subject at this period of his life. All of these he treats with the naïve simplicity of Reformed Holland, giving us the real carpenter's shop and the mother watching over the Infant reverently and lovingly, with a fine union of realism and idealism.
The street in which he lived was full of Dutch and Portuguese Jews, and many a Jewish rabbi sat to him. He accepted or in vented their turbans and local dress as characteristic of the peo ple. But in his religious pictures it is not the costume we look at ; what strikes us is the profound perception of the sentiment of the story, making them true to all time and independent of local circumstance. A notable example of this feeling is to be found in the "Woman Taken in Adultery" of the National Gallery, painted in 1644 in the manner of the "Simeon" of The Hague. It commands our attention from the grand conception of the painter who has invested Christ with majestic dignity. A similar lofty ideal is to be found in his various renderings of the "Pil grims at Emmaus," notably in the Louvre picture of 1648. From the same year we have the "Good Samaritan" of the Louvre, the story of which is told with intense pathos. The helpless suffer ing of the wounded man, the curiosity of the boy on tiptoe, the excited faces at the upper window, are all conveyed with masterly skill. In these last two pictures we find a broader touch and freer handling, while the tones pass into a dull yellow and brown with a predilection for a note of deep rich red.
Rembrandt touched no side of art without setting his mark on it, whether in still life, as in his dead birds or the "Slaughtered Ox" of the Louvre (with its repetitions at Glasgow and Buda pest), or in his drawings of elephants and lions, all of which are instinct with life. But at this period of his career we come upon a branch of his art on which he left, both in etching and in painting, the stamp of his genius, viz., landscape. Roeland Rogh man, but ten years his senior, evidently influenced his style, for the resemblance between their works is so great that, as at Cassel, there has been confusion of authorship. Hercules Seghers also was much appreciated by Rembrandt, for at his sale eight pic tures by this master figure in the inventory, and Vosmaer dis covered that Rembrandt had worked on a plate by Seghers and had added figures to an etched "Flight into Egypt." The earliest pure landscape known to us from Rembrandt's hand is that at the Rijks museum (1637-38), followed in the latter year by those at Brunswick, Boston (U.S.A.) and "The River Scene," formerly in the collection of Marcus Kapfel, Berlin. Better known is the "Winter Scene" of Cassel (1646), silvery and delicate. As a rule in his painted landscape he aims at grandeur and poetical effect, as in the "Repose of the Holy Family" of 1647 in the National gallery, Dublin, a moonlight effect, clear even in the shadows. The "Canal" in the Rijks museum, Amsterdam, is also conceived in this spirit. A similar poetical vein runs through the "Landscape with Ruins" of Cassel, in which the beams of the setting sun strike on the ruins while the valley is sunk in the shades of approaching night. More powerful still is the weird effect of the "Windmill," with its glow of light and darkening shadows. In all these pictures light with its magical influences is the theme of the poet-painter. From the number of landscapes by himself in the inventory of his sale, it would appear that these grand works were not appreciated by his contemporaries. The last of the landscape series dates from 1655 or 1656, the close of the middle age or manhood of Rem brandt, a period of splendid power. In the "Joseph Accused by Potiphar's Wife" of 1655 we have great dramatic vigour and perfect mastery of expression, while the brilliant colour and glowing effect of light and shade attest his strength. To this period also belongs the great portrait of himself in the Fitz william museum at Cambridge.