Lost Rembrandt Found

Rembrandt's wonderful light has been revealed glowing beneath the dust of centuries, a famous panel lost for nearly 400 years. It was part of a sale at auction in Prague, and was discovered by Dr. Gustav Weil, collector, through an obscure Persian inscription and a signature almost buried in grime. The "light that never was on land or sea" was painted by Rembrandt, if by any one. His pictures glow with a peculiar mellow intensity that can hardly have existed in the actual scene before him. While the light from Rembrandt's brush falls on them, they are people in a dream, creatures of imagination as much as Hamlet, Pickwick, Lear. If the light were turned out there would remain only burgomasters, doctors, old women paring their nails, painted with marvelous, sometimes brutal, truthfulness to actual life in 17th century Holland. In the panel recently discovered, which represents the marriage of Alexander the Great with Roxane, five sources of light are introduced-- the greatest number ever observed in a single picture. Rays of evening sun from an invisible window to the left fall on Roxane and the court ladies. Daylight enters at a door and an open window above. Lamps glow dimly in the background. A sacrificial fire, tended by priests, flares duskily at the right. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), greatest of the Dutch School, was born to wealth, married to an adored wife, Saskia, but ended in the bankruptcy court, a widower. The charming Saskia was the subject of countless pictures. A new art center, which will contain no school of instruction, will be established in Paris, as a gathering place for American artists in France. The site will be the Hotel de Lausun, a large and fine building on the He St. Louis, in the Seine. The purchase will be arranged by the National Academy of Design. In the opinion of Edwin M. Blashfield, President of the Academy, this marks the "coming of age of American art." A painting by "El Greco," 15th century Spanish painter, brought the largest price, $9,000, at the auction of the Marius de Zayas collection in New York; not a large price, considering what is often paid for contemporary work.