mother to Rembrandt's legitimate children as well as to her own, and in 1660 she and the painter's son, Titus, entered into partnership as art dealers, and supported Rembrandt by the sale of his etchings. His vogue as a painter had by this time been eclipsed by the popularity of painters of less sombre genius. Fallen from his rich estate and frowned upon by the Church, the master found himself in the last period of his life deserted and unhonoured. Yet to this period belong many of his noblest works. "He had never cared," says M. Michel, "for the suffrages of the crowd. He set his face more steadily than ever towards the goal he had marked out for himself. Within the walls of his makeshift studios, seeking solace in work and meditation, he lived for his art more absolutely than before; and some of his creations of this period have a poetry and a depth of expression such as he had never hitherto achieved." But fresh sorrows descended upon the master as the end drew near. Hendrickje died about 1664, and this blow was followed in 1668 by the death of Titus. Crushed in spirit and broken by poverty, the old painter did not long survive his son. He died in 1669--unknown, unrecorded, and dishonoured. Gerard de Lairesse, then at the height of his reputation, said of him only that he was a master "who merely achieved an effect of rottenness," and was "capable of nothing but vulgar and prosaic subjects." Now, two centuries and a quarter after his death, Rembrandt's fame stands higher than even in the heyday of his success. His work as a painter is represented in the National Gallery by several masterpieces. Of his drawings and etchings the British Museum possesses a splendid collection; an exhibition of these (illustrated by an admirable Catalogue) was arranged in 1899. A _tour de force_ in the artist's speciality of contrasts of light and shade. Notice how a succession of these contrasts gradually renders the subject intelligible. "The eye falls at once upon the woman, who is dressed in white, passes then to the figure of Christ, which next to her is the most strongly lighted--and so on to Peter, to the Pharisees, to the soldiers, till at length it perceives in the mysterious gloom of the Temple the High Altar, with the worshippers on the steps" (Waagen: _Treasures of Art in Great Britain_, i. 353). "Beyond the ordinary claims of art, this picture commands our attention from the grand conception of the painter, who here, as in other pictures and etchings, has invested Christ with a majestic dignity which recalls Leonardo and no other" (J. F. White).