One would have supposed that such devoted art-patrons as the Dutch people of that time, would have hailed with delight the creation of such a masterpiece by one of themselves, and would have showered praises and commissions upon its creator. The very contrary seems to have been the fact; nor is the reason far to seek.
Holland at that time abounded in Guilds and Companies, civil and military, Boards of Management of this or that Hospital or charitable Institution, and a perfect craze for being painted in groups animated one and all. The galleries are full of these "Doelen" and "Regent" pictures by great and little masters, and dreary objects many of them are. Each member subscribed his share, and each expected to get his money's-worth; so the painter was expected to distribute his light and his positions with an impartial hand, and a comically stiff and formal collection of effigies was often the result.
To all such considerations Rembrandt was gloriously indifferent. He was painting a picture of an event in real life, and he meant it to be a picture and alive, not a mere row of wax figures in a booth; and when he had finished, the subscribers cried aloud in wrath and consternation.
And indeed it is difficult not to sympathise with the poor amateur soldiers who had paid to be painted, not to be immortalised. Even if they could have known, they would have cared very little for the fact that their picture was to rank in after years among the most famous in the world, since their worthy citizen-faces were not to be discerned in it, and no one would care to read the names which, failing to move the domineering painter, they caused to be inscribed upon an escutcheon in the background so that they might get some return for their florins. They had their revenge, however, after a kind, for they left it to blacken with dirt and smoke; and when their descendants removed it from the Doelen to the Hotel de Ville they cut it down ruthlessly on either hand to make it fit a smaller space, as a copy by Lundens in the National Gallery [No. 289] makes evident.
There is still no lack of portraits in 1643. There are two pairs, "The Gentleman with the Hawk," and "The Lady with the Fan," at Grosvenor House, which, however, Dr Bode and M. Michel decline to admit among Rembrandt's works, and "The Dutch Admiral" and "His Wife," now in America. It is doubtful whether the "Old Woman weighing Money," at Dresden [No. 1564], ought to be included among the portraits; but there can be no question about the "Young Man in a Cap and Breastplate," in the same gallery [No. 1565], the "Old Woman," in the Hermitage [No. 807], called "Rembrandt's Mother," or the "Man," in the collection of Mr Armour. The other "Old Man," belonging to Mr Schloss of Paris, is probably only a study; and the "Portrait of a Man," incorrectly called Six, in the collection of Morris K. Jessup of New York, is but conjecturally a work of this year. There are three portraits of himself: one at Weimar, one belonging to Prince Henri of the Pays Bas, one, signed but undated, at Carlsruhe [No. 238]; and there is a portrait, called Saskia, at Berlin [No. 812]. The only signed subject of the year is the "Bathsheba at her Toilet," in the Steengracht collection at the Hague; but "The Holy Family," at Downton, was painted about that time.