Rembrandt painted nearly a hundred pictures of his mother that we can trace.  In most of them she holds in her hands a little Bible, and thus did the son pay tribute to her devoted piety.  She was a model of which he never tired.  He painted her in court dress, and various other fantastic garbs, that she surely never wore.  He painted her as a nun, as a queen, a court beauty, a plain peasant, a musician; and in various large pictures her face and form are introduced.  And most of these pictures of his mother are plainly signed with his monogram.  He also painted his sister as the Madonna, and this is signed; but although he doubtless painted his father’s face, yet he did not sign such pictures, so their authenticity is a hazard.  This fact gives a clue to his affections which each can work out for himself.

Rembrandt remained with Swanenburch for three years, and the master proved his faithful friend.  He gave him an introduction into the aristocratic art world which otherwise might have barred its doors against so profound a genius, as aristocracy has done time and again.

The best artists are not necessarily the best teachers.  If a man has too much skill along a certain line he will overpower and kill the individuality in his pupil.  There are teachers who smother a pupil with their own personality, and thus it often happens that the strongest men are not the most useful as instructors.  The ideal teacher is not the one who bends all minds to match his own; but the one who is able to bring out and develop the good that is in the pupil—­him we will crown with laurel.

Swanenburch was pretty nearly the ideal teacher.  His good nature, the feminine quality of sympathy in his character, his freedom from all petty, quibbling prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him.  A wrong environment in those early years might easily have shaped Rembrandt into a morose and resentful dullard:  the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would have been turned to gall.

* * * * *

The little business on the city wall had prospered, and Harmen van Ryn moved, with his family, out of the old mill into a goodly residence across the street.  He was carrying his head higher, and the fact that his son Rembrandt was being invited to the homes of the professors at the University was incidentally thrown off, until the patrons at the beer-garden grew aweary and rapped their glasses on the table as a signal for silence.

Swanenburch had given a public exhibition of the work of his pupils, at which young Rembrandt had been pushed forward as an example of what right methods in pedagogics could do.

“Well, why can not all your scholars draw like that, then?” asked a broad-beamed Dutchman.

“They certainly could, if they would follow the principles I lay down,” answered the master severely.