The time came when the child was allowed to visit the National Gallery unattended; but although he never lost his affectionate awe for the two dim interiors, he did not really begin to appreciate Rembrandt until he had reached manhood. Rembrandt is too learned in the pathos of life, too deeply versed in realities, to win the suffrages of youth. But he was attracted by another portrait in the National Gallery--that called _A Jewish Rabbi_. This was the first likeness he had seen of a Rabbi, a personality dimly familiar to him through the lessons in church and his school Scripture class. Remembering what his mother had told him about _chiaroscuro_, he noted how the golden-brown light is centred upon the lower part of the face; how the forehead is in shadow, and how stealthily the black hat and coat creep out from the dark background. He had never seen, and never could have imagined, such a sad face. This Rabbi seemed to be crouching into the picture as he dimly understood that Jews in all ages, except those who owned diamond mines in South Africa, had cringed under the hand of their oppressors.
He wondered how Rembrandt knew what a Rabbi was like. His father might have told him that Rembrandt's pencil and brush were never idle, that he was for ever making pictures of himself, of his father, of his mother, of his wife, of his children and relations, of every interesting type that came within the ken of his piercing eyes; that one day, when he was prowling about the Jews' quarter at Amsterdam, he saw an old, tired, wistful Hebrew sitting in the door of his shop, engaged him in conversation, persuaded him to sit for his portrait, and lo! the nameless Amsterdam Jew became immortal.
[Illustration: AN OLD MAN WITH A LONG WHITE BEARD, SEATED, WEARING A WIDE CAP, HIS HANDS FOLDED
His father might also have told him (perhaps he did) that the artist, wherever he goes, sometimes hardly aware of his preoccupation, is always selecting subjects to paint, and brooding over the method of treatment; that one day Rembrandt noted with amusement a man in the street shaking his fist at the skull-capped head of an older man bobbing angrily from a window. Rembrandt chuckled, remembered the incident, painted it, and called it, for a picture must have a title, _Samson threatening his Father-in-law_; that one day Rembrandt saw a fair-haired, chubby boy learning his lessons at his mother's knee. The composition appealed to his artist eye, he painted it, and the result is that beautiful and touching picture in the Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg called _Hannah teaching Samuel his Lessons_.