Sipsey Street Irregulars: A Celebration of Historic Dutch Militia: Rembrandt's Night Watch.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

A Celebration of Historic Dutch Militia: Rembrandt's Night Watch.

"The Arquebusier Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch," 1642.

Rembrandt's famous Night Watch sees the light of day after multi-million museum revamp.

I've always wanted to see this painting up close, but I doubt at this point in my life that I will. Glad to see it is getting better lighting.

Dutch militia arquebusier.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: I worked in Amsterdam for a year and a half. I spent several weekends in the Rijks museum ... up close you can feel the emotion coming off of the painting - something that I have not experienced with other paintings.; October 27, 2011 at 11:53 AM
Michael Gilson said...: Another piece of evidence that the painting is a day scene that has darkened over time, one of the background figures is using a lens to light the match on his musket. This was pointed out to me years ago when I called the painting "The Night Watch"; October 27, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Interesting to note that generations of art "authorities" waxed eloquent about Rembrandt's use of dark and somber tones in this painting, only to find out recently after a thorough cleaning that they were talking about a layer of candle soot and decomposing varnish.

Ditto for their horror over the "cartoonish" look of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling after it was cleaned of 400 years of filth.

Kinda like the infamous "shoulder thing that goes up".

Some experts aren't very, If you catch my meaning.; October 27, 2011 at 1:34 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

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"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

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"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, October 27, 2011

A Celebration of Historic Dutch Militia: Rembrandt's Night Watch.

3 comments:

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