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Lesson
Lesson 3. Rembrandt, “The Night Watch”: light, movement, the group
Work through how Rembrandt brought a dull group portrait to life with light and diagonal movement.
How to bring a group portrait to life
Rembrandt's “Night Watch”
Rembrandt, “The Night Watch” (1642, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) — a famous group portrait of a city militia company. Such portraits were usually dull: people in a row, like in a group photo, each equally static (after all, each had paid for his place). Rembrandt did the unthinkable — he turned a posed sitting into a living scene.
The company seems to have just set off: the captain in black gives an order and steps forward, his gesturing hand reaching straight out at us (and casting a shadow on the yellow coat of the lieutenant beside him — a famous detail). Someone loads a musket, someone carries the banner, a child runs, a dog barks. The composition is built on diagonals and contrast — hence its energy.
The main tool is light (chiaroscuro). Two or three key figures are brightly picked out of the general gloom: the captain, the lieutenant in light colors, and a mysterious little girl in a golden dress on the left. The rest are sunk in half-light. The light here is not realistic but “stage-directed”: it places the accents like a spotlight in a theater.
The title “The Night Watch” came later, and by mistake: the painting darkened under layers of varnish, and the scene was taken for a night scene. In fact, the action takes place in daytime.
Lesson notes
Rembrandt's “Night Watch”
Rembrandt, “The Night Watch” (1642, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) — a famous group portrait of a city militia company. Such portraits were usually dull: people in a row, like in a group photo, each equally static (after all, each had paid for his place). Rembrandt did the unthinkable — he turned a posed sitting into a living scene.
The company seems to have just set off: the captain in black gives an order and steps forward, his gesturing hand reaching straight out at us (and casting a shadow on the yellow coat of the lieutenant beside him — a famous detail). Someone loads a musket, someone carries the banner, a child runs, a dog barks. The composition is built on diagonals and contrast — hence its energy.
The main tool is light (chiaroscuro). Two or three key figures are brightly picked out of the general gloom: the captain, the lieutenant in light colors, and a mysterious little girl in a golden dress on the left. The rest are sunk in half-light. The light here is not realistic but “stage-directed”: it places the accents like a spotlight in a theater.
The title “The Night Watch” came later, and by mistake: the painting darkened under layers of varnish, and the scene was taken for a night scene. In fact, the action takes place in daytime.