A Wanderer in Holland by E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas
page 118 of 321 (36%)
page 118 of 321 (36%)
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etched much; perhaps the portrait of himself in a steel gorget,
at The Hague, is his finest Leyden picture. It was not until 1632, the year in which he married his Saskia, that the first of his most famous works, "The School of Anatomy," was painted. Yet Leyden may consider that it was she that showed the way; she may well be proud. Rembrandt's later life belongs to Amsterdam; but Leyden had other illustrious sons who were faithful to her to the end. Chief of these was Jan Steen. Harmens the miller, as we have seen, became the father of a boy named Rembrandt in 1606; it was twenty years later that Steen the brewer rejoiced over the birth of a son called Jan. Of Jan's childhood we know nothing, but as a young man he was sent by his father to Utrecht to study under Nicholas Knupfer. Then he passed on to Adrian van Ostade and probably to Adrian Brouwer, with both of whom and Frans Hals we saw him carousing, after his wont, in a picture by Brouwer in Baron Steengracht's house at The Hague. Finally he became the pupil of Jan van Goyen, painter of the beautiful "Valkhof at Nymwegen," No. 991 in the Ryks Museum, a picture which always makes me think of Andrew Marvell's poem on the Bermudas. Like many another art pupil, Jan Steen married his master's daughter. Jan van Goyen, I might add, was another of Leyden's sons. He was born in 1596 and he died at The Hague in 1666, while London was suffering under the Plague. Jan Steen seems to have intended to make brewing his staff and painting merely his cane; but good nature and a terrible thirst were |
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