Life was his province. No subject was vulgar to him so long as it presented
problems of light and construction and drawing. Rembrandt, like Montaigne,
was never didactic. He looked at life through his eyes and through his
imagination, and related his adventures. One day it was a flayed ox hanging
outside a butcher's shop, which he saw through his eyes; another day it was
Christ healing the sick, which he saw through his imagination. You can
imagine the healthy, full-blooded Rembrandt of this portrait painting the
_Carcase of a Bullock_ at the Louvre, or that prank called _The Rape of
Ganymede_, or that delightful, laughing picture of his wife sitting upon
his knee at Dresden, which Ruskin disliked.

The other portrait of Rembrandt by himself at the National Gallery shows
that he was not a vain man, and that he was just as honest with himself as
with his other sitters. It was painted when he was old and ailing and
time-marked, five years before his death. His hands are clasped, and he
seems to be saying--"Look at me! That is what I am like now, an old, much
bothered man, bankrupt, without a home, but happy enough so long as I have
some sort of a roof above me under which I can paint. I am he of whom it
was said that he was famous when he was beardless. Observe me now! What
care I so that I can still see the world and the men and women about
me--'When I want rest for my mind, it is not honours I crave, but
liberty.'"

[Illustration: REMBRANDT LEANING ON A STONE SILL

1640. National Gallery, London.]

Twenty-eight seemed a great age to the child; but he thought it wonderful
that the portrait of an _Old Lady_ at the National Gallery should have been
painted when Rembrandt was but twenty-eight. She was too strong and