Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn is known as one of the greatest painters in history. He was a Dutch baroque artist. Baroque is a form of art that became popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Baroque makes the viewer feel involved, acts out spiritual or religious events, and uses drama. Most of his paintings were of people.

Rembrandt was born to a miller named Harmen on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, a town in South Holland in the Neitherlands. He was born into a family of ten. He went to school at Latin University of Leiden at the age of 14. He left that school to go to art school. Then, after mastering everything at the art school, he returned to Latin University of Leiden. He graduated at age 22.

Rembrandt used his art talent to support himself. He made all his money from selling his paintings. He was also an art teacher and sold other people’s art. Rembrandt’s work became better known and more valuable when some of his paintings were added to a collection in New York City.

Shortly before he became famous, Rembrandt married Saskia Van Uylenburgh. Saskia’s cousin was a successful art dealer. Saskia’s cousin introduced him to many wealthy collectors who wanted to hire Rembrandt to paint special works for them. As he became more successful in his career, his personal life was very sad. By 1641, Rembrandt and Saskia had four children. Three of his four children became ill and died tragically. Only his last child, Titus lived. Saskia died shortly after the children in 1642.

About 1649, Rembrandt hired Hendrickje Stoffels as a housekeeper. She modeled for many of his paintings and eventually became his common-law wife. Hendrickje died in 1663. Titus died in 1668. Eleven months later, on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt died in Amsterdam.

Rembrandt’s Art

Rembrandt created over 600 paintings and thousands of sketches. He showed lots of his emotions and feelings through his art. He used lots of shadows in his painting. Rembrandt was Christian and had paintings of stories from the Bible. His paintings were unusual for where he lived because the people did not usually draw things from church or royalty items.

When Rembrandt’s life changed his work changed also. For example, when his first wife died his paintings became sad and dreary. At one point in his life, he was extremely sarcastic. During this time, he used six items a lot, and a lot of dark red in his paintings and a lot of six items (as in a painting with six men or other items). Some of his paintings had a lot of gold and gray. This was in some of the last years of his life. Rembrandt used drama in all of his paintings.

Rembrandt’s personal life was filled with tragedy. Besides the death of his wives and children, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is when you lose all your money and can not pay your bills. In 1656, he had to sell all of his artwork and his house to pay his bills. However, instead of him doing worse when he had problems in his life, his work became even better.

Some of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, including Jewish Bride (1632), The Syndics of The Cloth Guild (1661), Bathsheba (1654), Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph (1656), and a self portrait (1669), were painted during times of dramatic change and hurt in his life. The self portrait is 86 x 70.5 cm. It is in the National Gallery in London. He drew many self portraits. In all of them dark shadows cover parts of his face.

It is a good thing Rembrandt expressed his feelings with his paintings, but he did not take the time to express them in any other way. Because of this he did not have very many friends. After Rembrandt died, his paintings inspired many arts from long ago, and they still inspire people today. He was a very great artist.

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