become a man. Other works, such as
_The Shipbuilder and his Wife_ at Buckingham Palace, _The Syndics of the
Drapers_ at Amsterdam, that ripe expression of Rembrandt's ripest powers,
convinced him of the master's genius. He was deeply impressed by the range
of portraits and subject-pictures at the Hermitage Gallery, many of which,
by the art of Mr. Mortimer Menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the
untravelled; but the _Christ at Emmaus_ revealed to him the heart of
Rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may
attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship.

He found this intensity of emotion again in the _Portrait of his Mother_ at
Vienna. The light falls upon her battered, wrinkled face, the lips are
parted as in extreme age, the hands, so magnificently painted, are folded
upon her stick. When we look at Rembrandt's portrait of _An Old Woman_ at
the Hermitage Gallery, with that touch of red so artfully and fittingly
peeping out from between the folds of her white scarf, we feel that he can
say nothing more about old age, sad, quiescent, but not unhappy; when we
look at the portrait of _An Old Lady_ in the National Gallery (No. 1675) we
feel that he can tell us no more about old age that still retains something
that is petty and eager; but in the portrait of his mother at Vienna,
Rembrandt, soaring, gives us quite another view of old age. It is the
ancient face of a mother painted by a son who loved her, who had studied
that face a thousand times, every line, and light, and aspect of the
features, and who stated all his love and knowledge upon a canvas.

Rembrandt was always inspired when he painted his own family. There is a
quality about his portraits of father, mother, Saskia, Titus, and
Hendrickje, yes! and of himself, that speaks to us as if we were intimates.
It is a personal appeal. We find it in every presentment that Rembrandt
gives us of another figure which constantly inspired his brush--the figure
of Christ. In _The Woman taken in Adultery_, it is His figure that is
articulate: it is the figure of Christ in the Emmaus picture that amazes:
it is the figure of Christ that haunts us in a dozen of the etchings.

Slowly the child, now become a man, began, as he thought, to understand
Rembrandt. Why did _The Singing Boy_ at Vienna, apart from the quality of
the painting, and the joy depicted on that young smiling face, make a
personal appeal to him? Because he