Today is the birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Dutch artist. He is considered the most important artist in Dutch history, and one of the great visual artists in art history. 

Born in 1606 in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands, Rembrandt was the ninth child of a miller father and baker mother. Rembrandt dropped out of secondary school at the age of 14 to become the apprentice to a painter in Leiden. 

Rembrandt studied painting for three years as an apprentice, following it up with a short six-month apprenticeship in Amsterdam. Unlike most of his artist peers who further honed their artistic skills by studying in Italy, Rembrandt never left the Netherlands. 

By the tender age of 18, Rembrandt set up a studio in his hometown of Leiden, refining his art while teaching other artists. His break came when his paintings caught the eye of a statesman. The statesmen began setting Rembrandt up with commissions from the Dutch Imperial Court, the Hauge. With this, Rembrandt was able to move to Amsterdam, a booming bustling city. 

From there Rembrandt’s reputation grew, and so did his income. Although Rembrandt saw financial success with his paintings and etchings, he still lived paycheck to paycheck. He just had very large paychecks. He enjoyed spending money on collecting art and rarities, and the home he and his wife had bought had a big mortgage attached to it. Toward the end of his life he would have to sell most of his collections and move to a smaller home to repay a few of his large debts.

During his lifetime Rembrandt became revered in Europe as a great artist, not through his paintings, but through his etchings. Rembrandt’s preferred etching method was a simple etching needle and copper plates. He could etch one copper plate and make multiple prints from it. They were less expensive and physically smaller than his paintings, allowing for wider circulation throughout the continent. Given the difficult task that etching is, the detail and alertness captured in Rembrandt’s etching, speak to his skill and reputation as art history’s greatest etcher. 

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

 Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

 With the dragon-fly on the river.

 

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

 From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had fled away,

 Ere he brought it out of the river.

 

High on the shore sat the great god Pan

 While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

 To prove it fresh from the river.

 

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

 (How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

 In holes, as he sat by the river.

 

'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan

 (Laughed while he sat by the river),

'The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.'

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

 He blew in power by the river.

 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

 Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

 Came back to dream on the river.

 

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

 To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—

For the reed which grows nevermore again

 As a reed with the reeds in the river.