In 1983, we had the opportunity to appreciate Rembrandt's painting ‘The Night Watch’ in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The aura of the work of art inspired us.
The name ‘Night Watch’, which the painting was apparently given around 1800 because of the darkening of its colours, is misleading. Rembrandt depicted the company of bowmen who stood guard during the ceremonial entry of the French queen Maria de'Medici into Amsterdam in 1638. The company is not a military unit, but rather a social guild of Amsterdam citizens consisting of crossbowmen and archers.
In his Night Watch, Rembrandt intentionally depicts the archers and crossbowmen in a heterogeneous everyday scene. In the group portrait, the characters are presented in the artistic light according to their importance: In the foreground are the captain Frans Banning Cocq, dressed in black, and the lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, in a yellow uniform, flanked by a flag-waving sergeant and a drummer, while in the background three men are positioned doing different rifle exercises. There is also a bright-coloured woman with a chicken on her belt, the claws of which are supposed to symbolise the archers' guild. The people in the picture are standing in subgroups, which are joined together by subtle colour correlations. The typical pictorial diagonal of Flemish painting is missing. Rembrandt's intention with his Night Watch was to emphasise the importance of the civil defence forces for the freedom and prosperity of the people of Amsterdam. Rembrandt's contemporaries found the Night Watch provocative because its iconography and symbolism ran counter to the spirit of the times.
Today, after long periods of display in the Schutterhof and the Amsterdam City Hall, the painting can be enjoyed in the Rijksmuseum (www.rijksmuseum.nl).
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn was born in Leiden in the Netherlands in 1606. After his school and university days and working as a painter in Leiden, he went to Amsterdam in 1631, where he initially devoted himself to portrait painting and later to Flemish Baroque painting and graphic art. Rembrandt died in poor circumstances in Amsterdam in 1669.
