We spent two inspirational hours there yesterday afternoon. It isn't that you get a lot of original paintings/etching to look at - most of the actual art is encountered through reproductions - largely digital images. But what you get an extraordinarily vivid sense of is how the Great Painter actually worked and made that art on a day-to-day basis.
There's a deeply moving personal story told as well, with exemplary clarity - simple but not simplistic. Rembrandt buys the house, a prosperous, successful young artist in a happy marriage, looking set to further thrive. He leaves it some twenty years on, a bankrupt who has has weathered a number of personal tragedies & deep disappointments. To all intents and purposes a failure (and probably not a particularly nice guy.)
But he has produced wonders, and it looks like he was driven to do so. The details of the house suggest a man who was deeply in love with the details of life itself, in all its manifestations, driven to capture these on canvas, on paper, in chalk, ink, paint. And we get the privilege of seeing through his extraordinary eyes.
I came out of the house reminded of what a strange gift life is, and how easy it is to see that when you are invited to really, really look.
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