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such studies in the light of serious portraiture: "It had never occurred to the young artist," he says, "to make a dignified portrait of himself at the time when he painted these pictures." The execution is clumsy, the color is dull and heavy and of the brownish tone common to Rembrandt's early painting, and much of the drawing--as in the rings of hair escaping to the surface from the thick curling mass--is meaningless and indefinite, but the distribution of light and shade is not unlike that of Rembrandt's later work and the touch has a certain bold freedom that seems to have been his from the first whenever he served as his own model, even while his handling was still hard and prim in his portraits of others. Another work ascribed to his early period, about 1634, is the "Man with a Helmet," also commonly known as a self-portrait, fluent in execution and vivacious and lifelike in expression, yet not without that hint of conscious pose common with the artist in his endeavors to force the note of character. The blunt, strong features are strikingly like those of the authenticated portraits of the artist, but Dr. Karl Voll, Director of the Alt Pinakothek at Munich, declares that the idea of a "self-portrait," attractive as it is, can hardly in this case be upheld. Whoever the sitter may have been, the painting is an amazing example of dexterity of hand and acute observation. The sharp glitter of the helmet, the contrasting flesh-like quality of the painting in the face, the light vigorous drawing of the moustache and hair, give an impression of the artist's mastery of his craft hardly to be surpassed at any period of his life. Far less poetic in its color-scheme and chiaro-oscuro than the youthful portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardiner's collection, it is even more eloquent of the ease with which he managed his tools. Of a still greater charm, with subtler problems met and solved, is the portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, whom he married in Amsterdam in the year 1634, the probable date of the Cassel portrait. At all events the young woman carries in her hand a spray of rosemary, the symbol of betrothal, and her dress has the richness of a Dutch bride's equipment. Here we see Rembrandt's art in perhaps its most delicate and psychologically interesting phase. The character revealed by the small pretty features has neither extraordinary force nor marked individuality. The lines are neither deep-cut nor broad. One is reminded of
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