At the Chicago Fair, in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three, there was shown a most striking “Anatomy Lesson” from the brush of a young New York artist.  It pictures the professor removing the sheet from the face of the corpse, and we behold the features of a beautiful young woman.

Some day I intend to write a book entitled, “The Evolution and Possibilities of the Anatomy Lesson.”  Keep your eye on the subject—­we are not yet through with it.

Swanenburch offered to give Rembrandt a room in his own house, but he preferred the old mill, and a wheat-bin was fitted up for a private studio.  The fittings of the studio must have cost fully two dollars, according to all accounts; there were a three-legged stool, an easel, a wooden chest, and a straw bed in the corner.  Only one window admitted the light, and this was so high up that the occupant was not troubled by visitors looking in.

Our best discoveries are the result of accident.

This single window, eight feet from the ground, allowed the rays of light to enter in a stream.  On cloudy days and early in the mornings or in the evenings, Rembrandt noted that when the light fell on the face of the visitor the rest of the body was wholly lost in the shadow.  He placed a curtain over the window with a varying aperture cut in it, and with his mother as model made numerous experiments in the effects of light and shade.  He seems to have been the very first artist who could draw a part of the form, leaving all the rest in absolute blackness, and yet give the impression to the casual onlooker that he sees the figure complete.  Plain people with no interest in the technique of art will look upon a “Rembrandt,” and go away and describe things in the picture that are not there.  They will declare to you that they saw them—­those obvious things which one fills in at once with his inward eye.  For instance, there is a portrait of a soldier, by Rembrandt, in the Louvre, and above the soldier’s head you see a tall cockade.  You assume at once that this cockade is in the soldier’s hat, but no hat is shown—­not the semblance nor the outline of a hat.  There is a slight line that might be the rim of a hat, or it might not.  But not one person out of a thousand, looking upon the picture, but would go away and describe the hat, and be affronted if you should tell them there is no hat in the picture.  Given a cockade, we assume a hat.

By the use of shadows Rembrandt threw the faces into relief; he showed the things he wished to show and emphasized one thing by leaving all else out.  The success of art depends upon what you omit from your canvas.  This masterly effect of illusion made the son of the miller stand out in the Leyden art-world like one of his own etchings.

Curiously enough, the effect of a new model made Rembrandt lose his cunning; with strangers he was self-conscious and ill at ease.  His mother was his most patient model; his father and sisters took their turn; and then there was another model who stood Rembrandt in good stead.  And that was himself.  We have all seen children stand before a mirror and make faces.  Rembrandt very early contracted this habit, and it evidently clung to him through life.  He has painted his own portrait with expressions of hate, fear, pride, mirth, indifference, hope and wrath shown on his plastic features.