Rembrandt was born in Leiden in the Netherlands in It was during a period known as the 'Dutch Golden Age'. He came from a reasonably wealthy family.
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It took him only six months to master most of the important art work concepts with Pieter Lastman. Rembrandt served as an apprentice under Pieter, a time when he is believed to have become a fully-fledged painter and visual artist. He later returned to Leiden to showcase his art skills. This was after he started his own workshop following a short stay with another high profile artist of Leiden, Jacob Pynas.
Rembrandt is unique mainly because he did not acquire training from Italian art schools unlike most of his contemporaries who had travelled to Italy for additional studies in visual art.
Rembrandt already had a studio of his own, which he later shared with Jan Lievens. Rembrandt and Lievens were close friends and colleagues who had worked together on a number of projects. Rembrandt began to take in students. It was during this time that he managed to guide the famous artist, Gerrit Dou to success a year later.
Rembrandt managed to secure himself an important connection to Constantijn Huygens. Thanks to this connection, the famous Dutch artists managed to have a market for his paintings for many years. Notable customers of his paintings included Prince Frederik Hendrik who continued to buy paintings from Rembrandt from to Following the success of his art studio, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam where he established himself as a professional portraitist.
Despite having done the work for the very first time, he still managed to assert himself as a commanding figure of the portraitist fraternity. Both his career and his personal life prospered.
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After an engagement of more than a year, he married a well-to-do young woman, Saskia van Uijlenburgh. In the young couple set themselves up in a fine house in the Breestraat, now maintained as a museum, the Rembrandthuis.
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Like many wealthy men of his time, Rembrandt soon began to collect works of art, armor, costumes, and curiosities unusual trinkets from far places. He used some of these objects as props in his paintings and etchings images that are the result of transferring an image off a metal plate onto paper with the use of chemicals. Rembrandt's works of the mids were his most baroque, an elaborate style developed in the sixteenth century; indeed he seemed to be purposefully challenging the enormous reputation of painter Peter Paul Rubens — This is most expressed in the scenes from the Passion of Christ — The etching Angel Appearing to the Shepherds shows how the same drama and excitement, the combination of fine detail with a grand new sweep based largely on bringing together the composition through light and shadow, and the choice of the crucial moment—all characteristic of Rembrandt's baroque style—showed in his graphic works as well as his paintings in this period.
One of Rembrandt's largest and most famous paintings is the group portrait known since the mid-eighteenth century as the Night Watch. This is, in fact, not a night scene at all, and it is correctly titled the Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq. The painting was unfortunately cut down in the eighteenth century.
There is no foundation at all for the legend that Captain Cocq and his company were unhappy with their painting and that this failure began a decline in Rembrandt's fortunes that lasted until the end of his life.
Rembrandt Biography
In fact, there is considerable evidence that the picture was highly praised from the start. Such difficulties as Rembrandt had were not caused by any rejection of his work. Having had three children who died in infancy, Saskia gave birth to a fourth child, Titus, in September In June Saskia died. Geertge Dircx then entered Rembrandt's household in order to take care of Titus. Hendrickje Stoffels, who is first mentioned in connection with Rembrandt in , remained with him until her death in She left a daughter, Cornelia, who had been born to them in About Rembrandt developed a new interest in landscape which lasted through the next two decades.
A series of drawings and etchings show keen observation of nature, great originality in composing, and marvelous economy. The etched View of Amsterdam c. The tiny painting Winter Landscape has all the earmarks of having been painted from life, on the spot.
This would be a rare case in seventeenth-century Dutch landscape, which usually was painted in the studio from sketches. The first Anglo-Dutch War —54; when England battled the Dutch Republic may have played a part in Rembrandt's financial difficulties, of which there is evidence from on.
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All of his prized possessions were sold at auction, beginning in December , and three years later Rembrandt, Titus, and Hendrickje moved to a smaller house. In a Sicilian nobleman who was a discerning selective and shrewd collector commissioned a painting from Rembrandt. If the painting was satisfactory, two more were to be ordered.
Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer was completed in and shipped off to Sicily, and the two additional pictures were sent in The meaning of the Aristotle is not yet fully understood, but its quality is unquestionable. Rembrandt's Self-Portrait shows the aging artist seated squarely before us, meeting our eyes with forthright gaze, and wearing a fantastic costume whose sharp horizontals and verticals stress the composition based on right angles that best represents this period. A number of admirable etched portraits also date from this time, as well as etchings of religious subjects, such as the impressive Ecce homo , which reflects an engraving made in by the great Dutch graphic artist Lucas van Leyden — In and Rembrandt painted an enormous canvas for the splendid new town hall in Amsterdam.
It was the Conspiracy of the Batavians, or the Oath of Julius Civilis, known to us through the remaining fragment and a penand-wash drawing of the entire composition. Hendrickje died in In September Titus died as well.