Night Watch painting
Photograph by tracie7779on Flickr.
The Raft of the Medusa />When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands, the town hall became the Palace on the Dam. In 1715 it was moved to the Amsterdam town hall, for which Night Watch painting it was altered.
During the 1640s wealthy patrons began to prefer the bright colors and graceful manner that had been initiated by such painters as the Flemish portraitist Anthony van Dyck. . This balustrade and step were key visual tools used by Rembrandt to give the painting a forward Night Watch painting motion.
She is a kind of mascot herself: the claws of a dead chicken on her belt represent the clauweniers (arquebusiers); the pistol behind the chicken stands for clover ; and, she is holding the militia s goblet. The myth has no reasonable origin: there is no Night Watch painting record of criticism of the painting in Rembrandt s lifetime, and Captain Cocq even had a watercolor made of it for his personal album. The decline in the artist s popularity was likely due not to reaction to any one painting, but to a broader change in taste.
With Night Watch painting effective use of sunlight and shade, Rembrandt leads the eye to the three most important characters among the crowd, the two gentlemen in the centre (from whom the painting gets its original title), and the small girl in the centre left background. A total of 34 characters appear in the painting.
Some have suggested that the occasion for Rembrandt s commission and the series of other commissions given to other artists was the visit of the French queen, Marie de Medici, in 1638. It is on prominent display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is its most famous painting. The painting is renowned for three elements: its colossal size (363 x 437 cm ~ 11ft 10in x 14ft 4in), the effective use of light and shadow, and the perception of motion in what would have been, traditionally, a static military portrait. This painting was completed in 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age.
This was done, presumably, to fit the painting between two columns, an all too common practice before the 19th century. This resulted in the loss of two characters on the left-hand side of the painting, the top of the arch, the balustrade, and the edge of the step.
A 17th century copy of the painting by Gerrit Lundens at the National Gallery, London shows how it looked originally. The work was attacked with a bread knife by an unemployed school teacher, Wilhelmus de Rijk, in 1975, resulting in a large zig-zag of slashes. down the road to bankruptcy .
The dead chicken is also meant to represent a defeated adversary. The great canvas was detached from its frame and rolled around a cylinder.
The rolled painting was stored in a castle in Medemblik, north of Amsterdam. After the end of the war, the canvas was unrolled, re-mounted and restored; and then the Night Watch returned to its rightful place in the Rijksmuseum. A persistent misconception has it that Rembrandt s decline in popularity was due to a negative public reception of the painting. Luckily, the acid had only penetrated the varnish layer of the painting and the painting was fully restored. The painting is said to have been commissioned by the Captain and 17 members of his Kloveniers (civic militia guards), and although 18 names appear on a shield in the centre right background, the drummer was hired, and so was allowed in the painting for free.
The magistrates moved the painting to the Trippenhuis of the family Trip. Even though she was escaping at the time from her exile from France by her son Louis XIII her arrival was met with great pageantry. It was first hung in the Kloveniersdoelen in Amsterdam in the Groote Zaal (Great Hall).
The colour yellow is often associated with victory. For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish which gave the incorrect impression that it depicted a night scene, leading to the name by which it is now commonly known. The myth has even made its way into modern advertising; in 1967 KLM featured the painting in an advertisement which said See Night Watch, Rembrandt s spectacular failure (that caused him to be) hooted.
This is now known as the Doelen Hotel. The man in front of her is wearing a helmet with an oak leaf, a traditional motif of the Arquebusiers.
It depicts the eponymous company moving out, led by Captain Frans Banning Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash). Night Watch or The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. The painting may be more properly titled The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch.
De Rijk committed suicide in April 1976. In 1990, a man sprayed acid onto the painting with a concealed pump bottle. Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for the painting (each person paid one hundred), a large sum at the time.
Security guards intervened and water was quickly sprayed onto the canvas. Napoleon ordered it back, but after the occupation the painting was moved to the Trippenhuis again, which had now become the Rijksmuseum, and was moved to the new Rijksmuseum building when it was finished in 1885. The great painting was last moved in September 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Behind them the company s colours are carried by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen. The militiamen were also called Arquebusiers, after the arquebus, a sixteenth-century long-barrelled gun. Rembrandt has displayed the traditional emblem of the Arquebusiers in the painting in a natural way: the girl in yellow dress in the background is carrying the main symbols. It was successfully restored but some evidence of the damage is still observable close-up.
