It is estimated that this wonderful
engineering feat will extend over 33 years and cost $131,250,000.
Christine now conducted her artist friends out of the Palace and over to
the Rijks Museum to see Rembrandt's largest and best work, his "Night
Watch." It is on the right as you enter, covering the side of the room.
It represents a company of arquebusiers, energetically emerging from
their Guild House on the Singel. The light and shade of the Night Watch
is so treated as to form a most effective dramatic scene, which, since
its creation, in 1642, has been enthusiastically admired by all art
connoisseurs.
Rembrandt was the son of a miller, and his studio was in his father's
wind-mill, where light came in at a single narrow window. By close
observation he became master of light and shade, and excelled in vigor
and realism. At $50 a year he taught pupils who flocked to him from all
parts of Europe, but, like too many possessed of fine genius, he died in
poverty. Later, London paid $25,000 for a single one of his six hundred
and forty paintings. The Dutch painters put on canvas the everyday
home-life and manners of their people, while the Flemish represented more
the religious life of the lower Netherlands.
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