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Gatherings

ALL DRAWINGS TELL STORIES, but drawings of gathered people tell them most directly.
We read tensions and exchanges between people, and instantly engage with the

action of the scene. Storytelling and people-watching are obsessive human activities.

Blockbuster movies, television documentaries, soap operas, paintings depicting scenes

from history, daily newspapers, comics, and novels—our staple cultural diet—are

driven by a fascination with shared experience and the detail of what happens in other

people's lives.

Here, Rembrandt's bored and frustrated wife, Saskia, stares out from her gloomy

sickbed. Her all-too-clear expression shows annoyance and irritation with her

husband, presumably while he is making this drawing. He in turn scorches the paper

with his view and a certain speed of seeing all. Later in their lives, Saskia died after

childbirth, and so. in spite of how it may seem, this is not the portrait of an old

woman. Seeing through Rembrandt's eyes, we, too, are implicated in this marital

exchange made over the head of the anonymous nurse.

The spaces between people and the positions they occupy on a page are vital

to our understanding of the psychology or emotion of an event. As artists, we can

heighten or subdue drama with subtleties of exaggeration or caricature. We can direct

R E M B R A N D T V A N RIJN

Dutch painter draftsman, the viewer's attention in a scene by the format of its composition, the speed and

printmaker and one of the

greatest and most influential density of its lines, and its illumination. We can also use clothes, furniture, and other

masters ofWestern Art. He

is also the artist from whomprops to add layers of meaning and attitude.

we can learn most about Just as there are three parts to a traditional landscape drawing—the foreground,
handling pen and ink. This

vivid portrait of his wife

captures our attention. It middle, and distance—so drawings of gathered people can be loosely arranged in three

took only minutes to make types. First, the direct exchange (as shown here) where one or more characters hold eye

and yet it lives for centuries.

Aneedproduced the thicker

lines of the nurse, while a quill contact with, and therefore seem to see, the viewer. Second, the viewer is not directly

made the finer lines of Saskia.

Washes of shadow behind engaged and as a natural voyeur can feel invisible while watching the scene, even up

herwere laid with a brush.

close. Third, a crowd tells the story from a distance; there are no longer individuals but

one significant group or mass action. Drawings selected for this chapter explore these

Saskia Lying in ranges of proximity in the delivery of narrative. With a pocket full of disposable pens
Bedand a Nurse

1638

9 x61/2in (227 x 164 mm)and a travel journal, we also go out and draw the expressions of gathered people, finding

REMBRANDT V A N RIJN corners in crowded places to inscribe their action and energy onto the page.