Rembrandt was always inspired when he painted his own family.  There is a quality about his portraits of father, mother, Saskia, Titus, and Hendrickje, yes! and of himself, that speaks to us as if we were intimates.  It is a personal appeal.  We find it in every presentment that Rembrandt gives us of another figure which constantly inspired his brush—­the figure of Christ.  In The Woman taken in Adultery, it is His figure that is articulate:  it is the figure of Christ in the Emmaus picture that amazes:  it is the figure of Christ that haunts us in a dozen of the etchings.

Slowly the child, now become a man, began, as he thought, to understand Rembrandt.  Why did The Singing Boy at Vienna, apart from the quality of the painting, and the joy depicted on that young smiling face, make a personal appeal to him?  Because he is Rembrandt’s son, Titus; or if Titus was not actually the model, the features and the smile of Titus hovered between the father and the canvas.

[Illustration:  AN OLD WOMAN IN AN ARM CHAIR, WITH A BLACK HEAD-CLOTH

1654.  The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]

He found an authentic portrait of Titus in the Wallace collection, painted in 1657, the year after Rembrandt had become bankrupt.  It is one of the most charming portraits the master ever produced, a picture that even the most casual frequenter of galleries must pause before and love.  A red cap crowns his curly hair, which falls to his shoulders.  The face has a sweet expression; but the observant can detect traces of ill-health upon it.  Titus died before his father.  Father, mother, Saskia, Hendrickje, Titus, had all gone when the old man passed to his rest.

On the opposite wall at the Wallace collection is The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, a fine example of Rembrandt the chiaroscurist, straightforward, but touched with that mystery so rare in painting, but which, under certain conditions, was as natural to Rembrandt as drawing.  It is not always present in his work.  None can say that there is any mystery about the sober portrait pictures called The Wife of Jan Pellicorne with her Daughter, and Burgomaster Jan Pellicorne with his Son, in the Wallace collection.  A scriptural subject was needed to inspire Rembrandt’s brush with the sense of mystery.

It was the mystery of two pictures at the National Gallery that first drew the child to Rembrandt:  it was the etchings that gave him a deeper insight into Rembrandt’s sense of mystery, and made of him a willing Gamaliel at the master’s feet.

CHAPTER III

THE APPEAL OF THE ETCHINGS

The citizen and golfer, whose commerce with Rembrandt was narrated in the first chapter, approached the master through the writings of his Recoverers, certain art historians and scholars, who frequent libraries, search archives, and peruse documents; men to whom a picture is a scientific document rather than an emotional or intellectual experience.  He was well content to end his commerce with Rembrandt there.  History interested him:  to art he was apathetic.