It was not easy for our enthusiast to explain to the ladies of the Dorcas meeting that the dissection of a body was a suitable subject for the brush of a painter.  The Dutchmen of Rembrandt’s day were not so squeamish as we have become since.  They had a passion for the literal painting of literal things, and this picture was destined not for a Tate Gallery, but for the wall of an operating theatre.  Dr. Tulp desired a picture of himself performing an operation, and Rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever since.

Ten years later Rembrandt painted another Doelen or Regent picture which, under the erroneous title of The Night Watch, is to-day the chief attraction of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam.  This time it was not a group of surgeons, but a company of Amsterdam musketeers marching out under the leadership of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq.  In all these civic or military Regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist’s fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money’s worth in the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form.  It is an old quarrel between artist and public.  Mr. Abbey had to face it in his Coronation picture; Mr. Bacon had to face it in his Return of the C.I.V.’s; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator.  Much water had flowed under Burgomaster Six’s bridge since Rembrandt painted The Anatomy Lesson.  Then he was the obedient student.  Now he was an acknowledged master.  He painted The Sortie of the Company of Frans Banning Cocq as an artist who was profoundly interested in problems of light and shade, with strong views as to the composition of a picture, not as a methodical and mediocre painter desirous of carrying out the commission in a way to please his patrons.  They wanted a presentment of the face and figure of each member of the company who had subscribed a hundred florins.  Rembrandt gave them a work of art.  No doubt the captain and his lieutenant were well enough pleased, for they stride forth in the forefront of the picture, but the rank and file were bitterly hostile.  From the painting of The Night Watch his popularity began to wane.

The history of this picture, after it had been hung in the Doelen or assembly hall belonging to Captain Cocq’s company, was as troublous as the later life of Rembrandt.  Years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and ill-usage, it was removed from the Doelen to the Hotel de Ville, the authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side.  This is proved by a copy of the picture made by Lundens before the mutilation, now in the National Gallery.  When M. Hopman undertook the restoration of The Night Watch he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something that Rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight.  But the popular name of the picture is still The Night Watch.