Note (return) — Chapter VIII

Rembrandt did not always leave the vague thrill of doubt, terror, or even horror, which he sought to produce, to imagination working in the mysterious depths of his shadows. A very famous picture of his is 'Dr Deeman (an anatomist) demonstrating from a dead subject.' In another picture a man stealing from the gloom is in the act of stabbing in the back the unconscious man in the foreground. 25 Rembrandt's originality is as undoubted as his ability, and he was as great in etching as in painting. His defect as a painter was the frequent absence of any evidence in his work of a sense of refinement, grace, or even beauty; this can be said of him who spent means not his own on gathering together images of beauty and grace produced by the pencils and brushes of others. Many of Rembrandt's pictures are in the galleries of Amsterdam and the Hague, and we have many in London. The National Gallery has several examples, including two of Rembrandt's portraits.