Word: rembrandt
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...Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn was no eccentric, no drunkard, no lecher, no misanthrope, no hermit, no seeker after scientific truth. He simply loved to paint. He also loved mankind and knew it as few painters have ever known it. He liked money and what money bought; he knew everybody in Amsterdam from the famed Burgomaster Jan Six to his Amsterdam Ghetto neighbors, the Portuguese Jews, and the tramps and prostitutes along the spotless city's spotty waterfront. He spent most of his life turning out an amazing total of paintings, etchings and drawings, most of them first rate...
...born in Leyden on the Rhine circa 1606, youngest son of a prosperous miller. His four elder brothers all became poor cobblers and millers. His parents soon assigned Rembrandt to something better, gave him a year at the University of Leyden before he brought home a pile of drawings, said he was determined to be a painter...
...that time, almost exactly parallel with Rembrandt's career, The Netherlands was entering its "Golden Age" under the able stadtholder. Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau. And Amsterdam was the golden city of the Dutch. Their armies were the crack fighting force of Europe. Their sea captains were preparing to smash Spain, rival Britain. All about him Rem brandt saw a young nation of tradesmen, sailors and soldiers, the litter of trophies brought home from the Orient...
...married his dealer's cousin, Saskia van Uylenborch, a gentle, kindly girl of excellent family with a dowry of 40,000 guilders (about $16,000). He bought a fine house in the ghetto, still preserved in Amsterdam as the Rembrandt-huis, and decked Saskia in diamonds and pearls. Because Rembrandt's success as a portrait painter was enormous, the Company of Captain Cocq knew of no better man to do their group portrait...
...Rembrandt, however, set out this time to paint a picture, not a portrait. He showed the company tumbling out of their clubhouse, the captain and his lieutenant in brilliant highlight, some of the others crowded into almost total shadow. The company were hopping mad. As they had already paid for the canvas, they accepted it but hung it in an anteroom of the clubhouse. From that job dated Rembrandt's decline as a fashionable portrait painter. While the company were bickering about it, Saskia, who had borne four children, sickened and died...