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Rembrandt

Biography and Timeline

A Life in Three Acts

From a miller's son in Leiden to the most searching painter of his age, Rembrandt's sixty-three years moved from early promise to dazzling success, then to ruin and a final, fearless freedom.

  1. Act I · 1606 – 1631

    Early Years and Leiden

    Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden on 15 July 1606, the ninth child of a miller whose family took its name from the Rhine that flowed beside their windmill. His parents sent him to the Latin school and briefly to Leiden University, but his first biographer recorded that his nature drew him only to painting and drawing. After three years with the local painter Jacob van Swanenburgh, he spent six formative months in Amsterdam with Pieter Lastman, the leading history painter of the day, and came home determined to tell great stories in paint.

    Back in Leiden he set up as an independent master around 1625, working side by side with the brilliant young Jan Lievens. Their ambition caught the eye of Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange, who declared the pair already equal to the most famous painters. Rembrandt used his own face as a free model, etching himself scowling, laughing and wide-eyed with surprise, rehearsing the expressions he would later give to saints and sinners. In 1628 he took on his first pupil, Gerrit Dou, and by 1631 his ambitions had outgrown his home town.

    1. Born in Leiden on 15 July
    2. Enrols briefly at Leiden University
    3. Studies with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam
    4. Takes on his first pupil, Gerrit Dou
    A mustached man in a tall fur hat and fur-trimmed robe, hung with gold chains and holding a gilded staff.
    A Polish Nobleman, 1637. Exotic character studies like this one grew out of the costumed heads, known as tronies, that Rembrandt first painted in Leiden.

  2. Act II · 1631 – 1642

    The Golden Years and The Night Watch

    In 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, the booming capital of world trade, and joined the business of the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh. Success came almost at once. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, painted in 1632, turned a stiff group portrait into living drama, and the city’s merchants lined up to sit for him. In 1634 he married Hendrick’s cousin Saskia van Uylenburgh, the daughter of a former burgomaster of Leeuwarden, and painted her again and again: as a bride, as Flora, the goddess of spring, and as a laughing companion.

    In 1639 he bought a grand house on the Sint Antoniesbreestraat for 13,000 guilders, a debt that would shadow him for years, and filled it with paintings, prints, armour, shells and curiosities, while assistants in his busy studio helped meet the demand for portraits. Then, in 1642, came his most ambitious canvas: the militia company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, shown not lined up for inspection but surging into action. Later generations named it The Night Watch because its varnish had darkened. That same year Saskia died, not yet thirty, leaving him with their infant son Titus, the only one of their four children to survive.

    1. Paints The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
    2. Marries Saskia van Uylenburgh
    3. Buys the house on the Sint Antoniesbreestraat
    4. Completes The Night Watch, and Saskia dies
    An elderly woman in a black cap and wide white ruff, seated with spectacles in one hand and a book in her lap.
    An Old Lady with a Book, 1637. So many sitters came to the studio that Rembrandt likely painted this sitter’s face and hands himself and left her costume and chair to an assistant.

  3. Act III · 1642 – 1669

    Late Masterpieces and Bankruptcy

    Legend says The Night Watch ruined him. In truth, Rembrandt’s troubles grew from debt, changing tastes and a refusal to paint in the smooth, polished manner many buyers now preferred. His private life drew scandal too. Hendrickje Stoffels, who came to keep house and became his companion, was summoned before the church council in 1654 for living with him unmarried, since a clause in Saskia’s will meant that remarrying would cost him her inheritance. In 1656 he was forced to declare insolvency, and over the next two years his collection and his beloved house were sold at auction.

    Stripped of his possessions, he painted with more freedom than ever. Hendrickje and Titus set up an art business that employed him and shielded his work from creditors, while he produced The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild, The Jewish Bride and some of the most searching self-portraits ever made, building faces from thick, broken strokes of paint. Grief followed him to the end: Hendrickje died in 1663 and Titus in 1668. Rembrandt died on 4 October 1669 and was buried in a rented grave in the Westerkerk, leaving a body of work that changed what painting could reveal about the human soul.

    1. Declares insolvency
    2. His house is sold at auction
    3. Paints The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild
    4. Dies in Amsterdam on 4 October
    Rembrandt in his fifties, wearing a dark beret and a brown coat, looking directly out at the viewer.
    Self-Portrait, 1659. Painted the year after his house and possessions were auctioned, this self-portrait records every sign of age and hardship without flattery.

His Legacy

A gaze that still holds ours

Paintings
c. 300
Etchings
c. 300
Self-portraits
c. 80

Rembrandt left behind hundreds of paintings, etchings and drawings, and a way of seeing that generations of artists have tried to learn. To understand how he did it, look closely at the paint itself.

Study his techniqueEnter the Gallery