and
all were fitly grouped and united in the rapt attention with which
they followed the demonstration of their teacher.

In 1642 he received an order to paint a large picture of one of the
companies of the City Guard of Amsterdam. According to the custom of
the day, each person portrayed in the picture contributed his equal
share towards the cost of the whole, and in return expected his place
in it to be as conspicuous as that of anybody else. Such groups were
common in Holland in the seventeenth century. The towns were proud
of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see
themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure
of office. But Rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and
every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence,
although such was the custom to which even Franz Hals' brush had yielded
full compliance. For his magnificent picture of the City Guard,
Rembrandt chose the moment when the drums had just been sounded as
an order for the men to form into line behind their chief officers'
march-forth. They are coming out from a dark building into the full
sunshine of the street. All in a bustle, some look at their fire-arms,
some lift their lances, and some cock their guns. The sunshine falls
full upon the captain and the lieutenant beside him, but the background
is so dark that several of the seventeen figures are almost lost to
view. A few of the heads are turned in such a way that only half the
face is seen, and no doubt as likenesses some of them were deficient.
Rembrandt was not thinking of the seventeen men individually. He
conceived the picture as a whole, with its strong light and shade,
the picturesque crossing lines of the lances, and the natural array
of the figures. By wiseacres, the picture was said to represent a scene
at night, lit by torch-light, and was actually called the 'Night
Watch,' though the shadow of the captain's hand is of the size of the
hand itself, and not greater, being cast by the sun. Later generations
have valued it as one of the unsurpassed pictures in the world; but
it is said that contemporary Dutch feeling waxed high against Rembrandt
for having dealt in this supremely artistic manner with an order for
seventeen portraits, and that he suffered severely in consequence.
Certainly he had fewer orders. The prosperous class abandoned him.
His pictures remained unsold, and his revenue dwindled.

Rembrandt was