First, on a trip to Amsterdam with my daughter to see a college –
She didn’t end up going there – but it was rare
And special time, just the two of us together.
The famous Rijksmuseum was closed for renovation.
So we visited Rembrandt’s house.
Admired the pen drawings etched on metal.
Displayed in the comfortable, bourgeois home.
Saw the box-bed he shared with his housekeeper
Copper pots and Dresden china, none of it his.
He earned well always but spent better –
Lived beyond his means, and as he aged
Could not keep pace with his debts and went
Bankrupt, sold everything he owned.
They left the house. Managed to get around for a time
Vindictive rules set by the drawing guild, for bankrupt artists.
Rembrandt lived to 63, my father’s score,
Outlived his common-law wife and son
Was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
After 20 years, the body was destroyed.
Then recommended by a friend, at the National Gallery in London,
Between jobs and roles, juggling time as always, I
Captured a few hours to wait in line for the doors to open,
Got a ticket on the day to see the Self Portraits,
Drawn to the paintings from the end of his life
The unwavering, honest way he saw himself ageing
The fallen cheeks, the double chin, the blotchy skin
Dark eyes full of sorrow that still hold light.
Next, when my uncle at 80 made an intrepid trip to visit us in Boston
After an enervating visit to the Museum of Fine Art,
In the disneyworld Palazzo of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum
On a day in June, sunshine pouring into the courtyard
Enlivened with the fake croaks of frogs in audio art
Nothing labelled, as the eponymous philanthropist decreed,
In a corner of a room, I came across young Rembrandt
Connected with the portrait and was moved, by
The kind and loving gaze with which he saw himself at 21,
Brown-eyed, hopeful, a little goofy, under a fancy hat;
The way he doesn’t yet quite fill up the frame.