THE CASSEL REMBRANDTS.*
THE publisher of the English translation of Michel's Rem- brandt has followed up that enterprise by issuing the portfolio before us, in which seventeen out of the twenty-one pictures ascribed to the master in the gallery at Cassel are issued in the excellent photogravures of the Berlin Company. We welcome the appearance of such a publication, for, as we have more than once urged in these columns, the photographic reproduction of works of art is the most useful thing the publisher can do for the student's purposes. A maximum of photographs with a minimum of text is the ideal. There is room for the amply illustrated book of research and informa- tion like Michel's; there is room separately for literary appreciations of the work. A too common form of publication is the volume made tip of incomplete information diluted with twaddle and bound up with a small number of engravings or etchings, costly to make, and after all, misleading to look at. Books of that sort are fit neither for the student of pictures nor the historian, and exist only for the drawing-room table.
• Rembrandt : Seventeen of hia Masterpieces from the Collection of his Psctures in the Cassel Gallery. Reproduced in Photogravure by the Berlin Photographic Company. With an Essay by Frederick Wedmore. London: William liCilleMann.
It is true that a portfolio of photogravures like the present cannot be sold at a very modest price. Students no doubt can usually find their way to libraries where it will be found ; still, we should like to see things simplified yet further, and the simplest form would be a case of photographs, instead of photogravures, with a short note printed on the mount of each, giving the known facts of the picture's history and, if there be conflict as to its authenticity, the views of the chief authorities. Doubtless, an enterprise of this sort would not be profitable enough to tempt the publishers ; it ought to be carried out by the directors of galleries at cost-price.
It was all the more useful a work to publish the Cassel Rembrandts, because the Cassel Gallery lies somewhat out of
the way, and yet holds one of the largest collections of Rembrandt's work. It was, however, going too far to dub all the seventeen pictures masterpieces. The word should be sparingly employed even for the works of one of the greatest masters of painting, for between one Rembrandt and another there is a great deal of difference. But the seventeen include two portraits of women of extraordinary interest, at least one of a man, and two landscapes, alike remarkable in painting, one of them a vigorous sketch, the other an ambitious com- position. It ought to be premised that the remarks made here are limited to the evidence of these photogravures. The reviewer has not had the advantage of seeing the originals, and therefore design, light and shade, and handling, are all he can discuss.
The collection begins with the head of a boy that the experts now take to be an early study by Rembrandt from his own head. The hair is trickily drawn with the brush handle in a way that is more like the lazy work of an accom- plished painter than the strenuous study of a young one, but the disposition of shadow on the brow is impres- sive and the modelling of the features strong, so it may possibly be the work of Rembrandt. The "Study of an Old Man" that follows is vigorously handled ; but this, and the two portraits that succeed it, of " Coppenol " and the "Poet Krul," hardly impress one as masterpieces. These two are somewhat tame and dry. Bat the " Saskia " and the "Portrait of a Young Girl" have the bolding power of character followed out and expressed with the extremity of refinement. A "Rembrandt with a Helmet" comes between them, a rather bullying picture, and a "Portrait of a Man" follows, who is not set on his legs with complete dignity. Next comes a "Holy Family," a rather childish affair, which it is difficult to believe is Rembrandt's at all ; it looks as if some one had copied a picture of his school, frame and all, and the rod and curtain over the frame. "The Winter Landscape" appears to be a beautiful bit of painting with fall flowing brush ; the "Landscape with a Ruin," also a lovely painting in which the very manner of Turner is anticipated. Mr. Wedmore's comments on this plate are curiously off the point. Ha speaks of the felicity of its composition, "the wise disposing of multitudinous objects." He would have done better in this case to keep by his guide Michel, who sees that there is a certain incoherence and want of junction between fore- ground and hilly background. There is more than a suspicion of two perspectives, as well as of two pictures; and in smaller detail there is the awkward repetition of forms one directly, below another, as in the trees, and the placing of the castle. on the top of the bridge. Mr. Wedmore further singles out the swans, dragging in here the name of Degas in a be- wildering fashion. The swans are not very remarkable in themselves, and rather worrying to the eye as they are placed. The real merit of the picture lies in its wonderful aerial grada- tion, and the masterly expression in paint of all those air- enwrapt forms. Even the reproduction shows traces of repainting, and uncertainty on the author's part in the com- bination of his material, and it remains a collection of beautiful parts, with the governing lines determined, but the details imperfectly placed and subordinated. To the landscapes succeed the masterly portrait of Nicholas Bray- ningh, two less interesting figures of a man in armour and an architect, and two smaller heads. The final piece is the "Jacob Blessing," which, on the evidence of the photo- gravure. cannot be ranked for composition or expression among Rembrandt's finest works.
We do not find it possible to take Mr. Wedmore's preface very seriously. It does not clearly appear whether he has. seen the pictures, and he certainly adds nothing of portance to the information and views he extracts from Eisenmann, Bode, and Michel. To arrange this matter straightforwardly and as briefly as possible would have been the useful thing to do ; bat the habit of hesitation in criticism has been raised by Mr. Wedmore to a principle of style, so that by all the devices of qualification, dash, and parenthesis, be gives an effect of hesitation even to matters that admit of none. He is, for all the world, when he sets out upon a statement or opinion, like a nervous foot-passenger at a crossing. He takes a step or two, but is speedily alarmed by the heavy dray of authority bearing down from the right, and has to skip back from the swift hansoms of doubt on the left. Then there is a dropped parcel to pick up, and old opinions suddenly turning up behind who mast be shaken hands with. It is an agitating affair. Mr. Wedmore rebukes us with some pomp and a lapse from his usual decorum because we were amused (not "surprised") at a previous statement of his on the comparative value of Rembrandt's paintings and etchings. Let us urge him to take courage, and on this point, if on no other, to be what he shudders at as "cocksure." At this time of day, the assurance of the world is justified that Rembrandt was a supreme painter, r 0 less than a supreme etcher.
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