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Master of the light
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| Dutch painter and etcher. The
son of a prosperous miller in Leiden, he was apprenticed to
masters there and in Amsterdam. His early works show the
spotlight effects of light and shadow that were to dominate his
later works. After moving to Amsterdam in 1631, he quickly
became the city's most fashionable portrait painter, and in 1632
he was commissioned to paint the celebrated Anatomy Lesson of
Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Yearning for recognition as a biblical and
mythological painter, in 1635 he produced his Sacrifice of Isaac
and in 1636 the unconventional masterpiece Danaë. In 1634 he
had married Saskia van Uylenburgh, a woman of property, and
until 1642 he painted many tender pictures of her. That year,
when Saskia died and he completed his largest painting, the
extraordinary but controversial The Militia Company of Captain
Frans Banning Cocq (known as The Night Watch), was a watershed
in his life and art. His portrait commissions thereafter
declined and he turned increasingly to etchings and biblical
subjects. His Christ at Emmaus (1648) exemplifies the quiet
dignity and vulnerability of his later spirituality. In 1656,
after transferring most of his property to his son, he applied
for bankruptcy. In his last decade he treated biblical subjects
like portraits, and also did a wealth of self-portraits; many of
these paintings evoke a timeless world of quiet, deep emotion.
His paintings are characterized by luxuriant brushwork, rich
color, and a mastery of chiaroscuro. The silent human figure,
Rembrandt's central subject, contributes to the sense of a
shared dialogue between viewer and picture, the foundation of
Rembrandt's greatness and of his popularity today. |
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