Rabbi_.
This was the first likeness he had seen of a Rabbi, a personality dimly
familiar to him through the lessons in church and his school Scripture
class. Remembering what his mother had told him about _chiaroscuro_, he
noted how the golden-brown light is centred upon the lower part of the
face; how the forehead is in shadow, and how stealthily the black hat and
coat creep out from the dark background. He had never seen, and never could
have imagined, such a sad face. This Rabbi seemed to be crouching into the
picture as he dimly understood that Jews in all ages, except those who
owned diamond mines in South Africa, had cringed under the hand of their
oppressors.

He wondered how Rembrandt knew what a Rabbi was like. His father might have
told him that Rembrandt's pencil and brush were never idle, that he was for
ever making pictures of himself, of his father, of his mother, of his wife,
of his children and relations, of every interesting type that came within
the ken of his piercing eyes; that one day, when he was prowling about the
Jews' quarter at Amsterdam, he saw an old, tired, wistful Hebrew sitting in
the door of his shop, engaged him in conversation, persuaded him to sit for
his portrait, and lo! the nameless Amsterdam Jew became immortal.

[Illustration: AN OLD MAN WITH A LONG WHITE BEARD, SEATED, WEARING A WIDE
CAP, HIS HANDS FOLDED

1654. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]

His father might also have told him (perhaps he did) that the artist,
wherever he goes, sometimes hardly aware of his preoccupation, is always
selecting subjects to paint, and brooding over the method of treatment;
that one day Rembrandt noted with amusement a man in the street shaking his
fist at the skull-capped head of an older man bobbing angrily from a
window. Rembrandt chuckled, remembered the incident, painted it, and
called it, for a picture must have a title, _Samson threatening his
Father-in-law_; that one day Rembrandt saw a fair-haired, chubby boy
learning his lessons at his mother's knee. The composition appealed to his
artist eye, he painted it, and the result is that beautiful and touching
picture in the Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg called _Hannah teaching
Samuel his Lessons_.

To a child, the portrait of a painter by himself has a human interest apart
altogether from its claim to be a work of art. Rembrandt's portrait of
himself at the National Gallery, painted when he was thirty-two, is not one
of his remarkabl