From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Miss Cashen said today we would go to England but first had any of us remembered to find out about Rembrandt? None of us had and she said that we were very. Lazy children and she was disappointed because she wanted to hear about him. I wanted to say that if she wanted to hear about him why didn’t she find out about him herself, but I am trying to be good so I didn’t say anything. Then she said that she thought that maybe she would find a book about him down in the library and if we would excuse her for a minute she might find it. She did find one…

It was a story called “Night Watch” and that is the name of Rembrandt’s most famous painting. Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam. It was a very beautiful and rich city and full of beautiful things to paint but Rembrandt didn’t like to paint beautiful things, he liked to paint ordinary ones that nobody else looked at and tried to avoid, like poor people in ugly torn clothes and once he even painted a horrid bloody piece of meat hanging in a butcher shop. Of course he didn’t sell many paintings because no one wants pictures of poor people or bloody meat. But one day some very rich men came to see him. They wanted their portraits painted, but not singly, they wanted a group picture because they thought it would be cheaper that way. Rembrandt said that he would do it. They thought it would be nice if he would paint them sitting around a beautiful dinner table or all in a row on a marble bench in the park with tulips around them. But Rembrandt said that he wanted to paint them at their work when it was their turn to stay up all night and see to it that the fires in the city were controlled and that it was kept safe from burning. There were no fire engines in those days. So they said all right and every day for a long time they came and posed for him. He worked hard on the picture and he was very pleased and told them it was going to be a fine one but he wouldn’t let them see it until it was finished because he wanted it to be a surprise. Well one day it was finished. He thought he would give a party and he invited all of them to his house. There was a big curtain hanging in front of the picture, just like at the Orpheum, I guess. Rembrandt gave them all front seats. Then he pulled the curtain aside. He thought they would all jump up and clap their hands and hug his shoulders and tell him just how much they all liked the picture and their special portraits but they didn’t. They just sat there and made faces at it. They were really as mad as hornets and they began to make noises. The picture was very dark, just as dark as it really is at night. There was a light in just one tiny part of it so some of the men’s faces were clear and shiny but the others were sort of brownish and shadowy and some of them couldn’t even find themselves. They began to fight with each other because the ones in the dark part of the picture thought they shouldn’t pay as much as the ones in the light part. And all of them were furious at Rembrandt for not painting them the way they had told him to do it in the first place. Then Rembrandt lost his temper. He screamed and shouted and he shook his fist in their faces and he called them pigs and idiots and all kinds of other things and he threw them out of his house and told them never to come back. So they didn’t but Rembrandt became famous without them.

You can take a “tour” of the Night Watch painting at this link to the Rijksmuseum.