Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: REMBRANDT VAN RYN (BY HIMSELF) _National Gallery, London_] Masterpieces of Art REMBRANDT A COLLECTION OF FIFTEEN PICTURES AND A PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER WITH INTRODUCTION AND INTERPRETATION BY ESTELLE M. HURLL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. * * * * * PREFACE The choice of pictures for this collection has been made with the object of familiarizing the student with works fairly representative of Rembrandt's art in portraiture and Biblical illustration, landscape and genre study, in painting and etching. Admirers of the Dutch master may miss some well-known pictures. For obvious reasons the Lecture in Anatomy is deemed unsuitable for this place, and the Hundred Guilder Print contains too many figures to be reproduced here clearly. The Syndics of the Cloth Guild and the print of Christ Preaching will compensate for these omissions, and show Rembrandt at his best, both with brush and burin. There are perhaps no paintings in the world more difficult to reproduce satisfactorily in black and white than those of Rembrandt. His marvelous effects of chiaroscuro leave in darkness portions of the composition, which appear in the photograph as unintelligible blurs. With these difficulties to meet, great pains have been taken to select for the reproductions of this book the best photographs made direct from the original paintings. A comparative study of the available material has resulted in making use of an almost equal number from Messrs. Hanfstaengl & Co. and Messrs. Braun & Cie. In reproducing the etchings the publishers have been most fortunate in being able to use for the purpose original prints in the Harvey D. Parker Collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. ESTELLE M. HURLL. NEW BEDFORD, MASS. November, 1899. * * * * * CONTENTS AND LIST OF PICTURES PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT. PAINTED BY HIMSELF. _Frontispiece._ FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY MAISON AD. BRAUN & CIE. INTRODUCTION I. ON REMBRANDT'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE III. HISTORICAL DIRECTORY OF THE PICTURES OF THIS COLLECTION IV. OUTLINE TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN REMBRANDT'S LIFE V. SOME OF REMBRANDT'S FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES IN HOLLAND VI. FOREIGN CONTEMPORARY PAINTERS I. JACOB WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL PICTURE FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANZ HANFSTAENGL