Black Head-cloth

10. Minerva

11. Titus in a Red Cap and a Gold Chain

12. Portrait of an Old Lady, Full Face, her Hands folded

13. Portrait of an Old Lady in a Velvet Hood, her Hands
folded

14. Flora with a Flower-trimmed Crook

15. The Descent from the Cross

16. A Young Woman in a Red Chair holding a Pink in her
Right Hand

_The illustrations in this volume have been
engraved and printed at the Menpes Press._

REMBRANDT

CHAPTER I

THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT

Imagine a man, a citizen of London, healthy, middle-aged, successful in
business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and
limitations, as the absorption of Rembrandt in art. Suppose this citizen,
having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of
South Kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about
the Constantine Ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the Museum and
asks his way of a patient policeman to the Ionides collection. Suppose he
stands before the revolving frame of Rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from
right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed?
would his imagination be stirred? Perhaps so: perhaps not. Perhaps, being a
man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would
unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that
produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his
ear--"At the Holford sale the _Hundred Guilder Print_ fetched L1750, and
_Ephraim Bonus with the Black Ring_, L1950; and M. Edmund de Rothschild
paid L1160 for a first state of the _Dr. A. Tholinx_." Those figures might
stimulate his curiosity, but being, as I have said, a golfer, his interest
in Rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in
the revolving frame the etching No. 683, 2-7/8 inches wide, 5-1/8 inches
high, called _The Sport of Kolef or Golf_.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN OF EIGHTY-THREE

1634. National Gallery, London.]

Is it fantastical to assume that his interest in Rembrandt dated from that
little golf etching? Great events ofttimes spring from small causes. We
will follow the Rembrandtish adventures of this citizen of London, and
golfer. Suppose that on his homeward way from the Museum he stopped at a
book shop and bought M. Auguste Breal's small, accomplished book on
Rembrandt. Having read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and gri