Museum Het Rembrandthuis
Why is it significant?
Stand across the street and take in the tall brick house with its red shutters and stone trim. In 1639 Rembrandt, aged thirty-three, at the height of his fame and married to the well-connected Saskia van Uylenburgh, bought it for thirteen thousand guilders.
Key Facts
| Place | Museum Het Rembrandthuis |
|---|---|
| Address | Jodenbreestraat 4, 1011 NK Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.36940, 4.90130 |
| Part of Walk | Rembrandt's Amsterdam: The Night Watch, the Syndics & the Amstel |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand across the street and take in the tall brick house with its red shutters and stone trim. In 1639 Rembrandt, aged thirty-three, at the height of his fame and married to the well-connected Saskia van Uylenburgh, bought it for thirteen thousand guilders. It was a huge sum, and he never managed to pay it off.
He lived and worked here for nearly twenty years. On the ground floor he received clients and sold art; upstairs was his big studio, with north light pouring in, and next to it a room for his pupils. And then there was his kunstkamer, his cabinet of curiosities: shells from the tropics, Roman busts, weapons and armour, costumes, prints by the great masters... a whole world gathered in one room, used as props and inspiration.
It is also a house of grief. Saskia died here in 1642, the same year the Night Watch was finished. Rembrandt's style was drifting away from what wealthy clients wanted, he spent freely on art and objects, and his debts piled up. In 1656 he was declared insolvent. Clerks walked through these rooms writing down everything he owned, item by item, and the house and his collection were sold off. In 1658 he moved out to a rented house in the Jordaan.
And here is the miracle. That humiliating inventory survived, with its list of every room and every object. Using it, the museum, which opened in 1911, has refitted the house so that you can walk through the rooms almost as the clerks saw them: the box bed, the kitchen, the studio, the cabinet stuffed with shells. The bankruptcy that ruined him is the reason we can visit his home.
The museum also holds a large collection of his etchings, and Rembrandt was arguably an even more radical printmaker than painter. From the door, head south along the Jodenbreestraat and through the bustle of Waterlooplein, then follow the river Amstel to the long classical building on its eastern bank.