I have always had a strong affection for Dutch people, in the sense of  love, not so much because they are the tallest people in Europe and they invented the orange carrot, but more because people there are supremely hospitable, easy-going, and fun-loving - Oh! and they're serious about stamp collecting too, like me, which is why I went to attend the stamp auction of the Nederlandsche Postzegel Veiling  in Weesp in March 2019. I had never been to Weesp before, but was immediately struck by the beauty of the town with its protected historical center and fine examples of 17th and 18th century architecture. Archetypically Dutch, the town is lined with canals with many traditional half-timbered lift bridges, and there are three old windmills. Having flown in from Hong Kong, I awoke far, far too early at 4 am, and decided to walk through the center of town, like many Dutch towns so perfect for walking and cycling. Aside from one or two people walking their dogs, I learned that Dutch people are mostly inside their homes at this early hour. But birds are active and make sweet melody and ducks paddle up and down the canals without a care in the world. I took a few pictures from my morning tour of Weesp, as the sun was rising and the fog lifting from the canals. I show my pictures here without much commentary.

In the periphery around Amsterdam is a ring of military fortifications known as the 'stelling van Amsterdam', a defensive and fortified water line from which the lowlands could be inundated in the event of an enemy attack. One of the forts is found in Weesp. The ring of fortifications was constructed between 1880 and 1920. The line has never seen combat and the use of aircraft and heavy tanks had rendered it almost obsolete by the time it was completed.

The Jewish Bride

The identity of the couple is uncertain but it could be an Old Testament couple (perhaps Isaac and Rebecca of Genesis 26: 8). Rembrandt painted the picture circa 1667, a year or so before his death. At this time he didn’t have to prove anything, but gave himself away to considerable idiosyncracy of theme and technique. He applied a thick paste of paint in heavy, coarse brushstrokes to create the texture of dress and the roundness of the jewellery. Laying on such massively thick coats of paint gives the painting an almost sculptural quality. Maybe Rembrandt felt he should use up his last remaining paint towards the end of his life...

Seeing this painting up close in the Rijksmuseum is a dizzying experience! The brown and crimson earthy tones flicker in intensity, and one can notice how Rembrandt applied paint with a palette knife and scratched into it with the butt end of his paintbrush to give realistic folds in the clothing. We may think of painting as a delicate, refined and detailed process, but it could also be intensely physical work. When Rembrandt scratched and rubbed on this canvas it must have resounded through his workshop in his Amsterdam canal house; perhaps passers-by in the street below could hear the master hard at work in the studio.

Vincent van Gogh saw Rembrandt's painting in the Rijksmuseum and was moved by the intimacy and tenderness of the painting; “I should be happy to give ten years of my life if I could sit in front of this picture for a fortnight, with only a crust of dry bread for food.” In the painting a hand is placed on a bosom not out of lust but out of affection. The painting does not have the lightness of a seduction scene, but the gesture shows tenderness, affection and protection (it has been thought this is a painting of a father blessing his daughter on her wedding day, which is, I suppose, a possibility) – it is a painting of subdued emotion; the figures appear melancholy and to me sadness seems the prevailing sense. The figures make no eye contact but seem preoccupied with their own meditations. When I saw the painting in the Rijksmuseum, I felt sure that the figures were contemplating their own mortality and coming to understand that each person alone must attempt to make sense of it.

Rembrandt's self-portraits

The quantity is remarkable: we have close to 100 self-portraits (drawings, etchings, and paintings) that form a visual auto-biography which explores and shows the realities of growing older and aging. In the paintings, Rembrandt confronts us directly and is often dressed in fancy costumes, for example aristocratic costumes, costumes a hundred years old by the time he paints, and exotic oriental attire. In these paintings he appears to ask questions about the very nature of identity. If I was born a hundred years earlier, or if I were an oriental potentate, would I still be an artist? And what kind of artist could I be? A man can be many things indeed and a stable idea of selfhood is perhaps a fiction. As Rembrandt confronts us directly in his paintings he urges us to know ourselves better and to ask ourselves similar questions about identity.

To regard Rembrandts series of self-portraits, produced rather evenly through his career, as painting’s equivalent of an interior monologue – as a rigorous self-reflection and contemplation – is probably a Romantic stereotype that would have made little sense to Rembrandt. Instead the paintings were produced for a ready market, and appealed to well-heeled buyers who desired expressive paintings with display of remarkable technique and virtuoso representation of emotion. Buyers also liked to have paintings of famous people, and Rembrandt was a famous person. These buyers could possess a painting by a recognized master and they could marvel at, and show off to their friends, artworks that show the texture of flesh and clothing convincingly and make it glow with light and vibrant colour.

Rembrandt and his students painted nude models in Rembrandt's studio. As the temperatures were often low, the models posed in front of an oven to keep warm. Painters did not usually include the oven in their drawings as Rembrandt did here. He departed from decorum in several ways.

Rembrandt, 1630 (aged 24)

Rembrandt the poser! Rembrandt dressed up as an oriental prince wielding a dramatic-looking Kris knife.

Rembrandt delighted in dressing up and in rendering clothes; in fact he made clothing an integral part of his representation. We know that he had his own costume collection in his house and acquired many exotic artifacts. Sometimes he would dress up his son Titus and wife Saskia in exotic dress to paint them. They must have had a right laugh! (I like to think, a bit like teenagers dressing each other up before going to a fancy dress party.)

Dutch citizen and every tourist to this fine land go to see Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, like pilgrims flocking to Mecca. The Rijksmuseum appears built around the painting, to be found in the so-called Gallery of Honour which, as is clear to all who enter it, is designed to look like the nave of a cathedral, in which the colossal painting occupies the place of the altar. For me, the painting is a difficult one to love, truly, but I think I have decided to appreciate it as a genre painting that succeeds in subverting its genre.