Rembrandt: Bankrupt at 50, the Night Watch Attacked Three Times, Died in a Rented Room in 1669

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) is the most celebrated artist of the Dutch Golden Age and the most thoroughly documented case in the history of art of the gap between critical acclaim and commercial success. He was, in the 1630s, the most sought-after and most highly paid painter in Amsterdam. He declared bankruptcy in 1656, aged 50. He died in 1669 in a rented room, aged 63, with no money, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. His most ambitious work — The Night Watch (1642) — has been attacked three times in the 20th century: a bread knife in 1911, twelve cuts by a disturbed teacher in 1975, and an acid attack in 1990. It has been the subject of the most extensive technical analysis in art history, including a 44.8 gigapixel photograph and an AI-powered reconstruction of the original composition. At the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. DeckArts Berlin from ~$310.

Early Life and the Leiden Workshop

Rembrandt was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, the Netherlands, the ninth of ten children of Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn, a miller, and Neeltje Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck, from a baker’s family. The family surname “van Rijn” (“of the Rhine”) derives from the family’s proximity to the Rhine river near their Leiden mill. Rembrandt was christened at the Pieterskerk in Leiden on 22 July 1606 — seven days after his birth, as was standard for the period.

He attended the Latin School in Leiden, suggesting an education above the level of his miller father’s social position — either Harmen van Rijn had the means and ambition to educate his son for the learned professions, or Rembrandt’s early intelligence attracted patrons who supported his education. He enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1620, at age 14, but left quickly; the surviving university registration describes him as “a student of painting.” He was apprenticed to the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburch approximately 1621–1623, with whom he studied for approximately three years.

In 1624–1625, at approximately 18–19 years old, Rembrandt spent six months studying under Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Lastman (1583–1633) was the most important Amsterdam history painter of his generation, specifically celebrated for his multi-figure narrative compositions with dramatic lighting and psychological specificity. Six months under Lastman transformed Rembrandt’s technical ambitions: the specific qualities that define Rembrandt’s mature style — the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, the multi-figure psychological narrative, the specific expressiveness of faces — are directly attributable to the Lastman period’s influence. Rembrandt returned to Leiden after the six months and established his own workshop, aged approximately 19–20.

Amsterdam and the Golden Age: 1630s Success

In approximately 1631–1632, Rembrandt moved permanently from Leiden to Amsterdam, which was at that moment the wealthiest and most commercially dynamic city in the world: the Dutch Golden Age’s capital, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC), the centre of the Dutch art market, and the home of the most prosperous merchant class in Europe. The Dutch Republic’s specific quality: it was the first major European society in which the primary domestic art patron was the merchant bourgeoisie rather than the church or the aristocracy. The Dutch middle class bought art — portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes — for their domestic interiors in quantities unprecedented in any previous European society.

Rembrandt’s specific commercial success in the 1630s: he was the most sought-after portrait painter in Amsterdam within three years of his arrival. His tronies (character studies in the Lastman manner), his history paintings (Old Testament and mythological subjects), and above all his portraits established his reputation with extraordinary speed. The specific quality that distinguished his portraits from those of his Amsterdam contemporaries: the psychological depth of the sitters’ expressions, the specific quality of the light (warm, directional, falling from a single source on the face while the rest of the composition recedes into warm shadow), and the trompe-l’oeil specificity of the painted textiles, metals, and jewellery. Rembrandt’s Amsterdam patrons in the 1630s included Constantijn Huygens (secretary to the stadtholder Frederik Hendrik, the most important cultural patron in the Dutch Republic) and the most prominent Amsterdam merchant families. His price for a portrait: by the mid-1630s, he was charging approximately 500 guilders for a portrait — a sum that represented approximately a year’s income for a skilled craftsman.

Saskia van Uylenburgh: Marriage, Wealth, and the Contract

In June 1634, Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenburgh (2 August 1612 – 14 June 1642), the daughter of Rombertus van Uylenburgh, a Frisian burgomaster and lawyer. Saskia was the cousin of Hendrick van Uylenburgh, the Amsterdam art dealer in whose studio and business Rembrandt had based his initial Amsterdam operation. The marriage connected Rembrandt to one of the most prosperous and most culturally prominent Frisian-Amsterdam families.

Saskia’s specific social and financial significance: she brought a substantial dowry (approximately 40,750 guilders) and the social credentials of the van Uylenburgh family’s merchant-professional class. The Rembrandt of the 1630s — painting major commissions, building a collection of art, antiquities, weapons, costumes, and natural history specimens as studio props, and purchasing a substantial house on the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat in Amsterdam (now the Rembrandt House Museum) — was living at a level of domestic consumption that his professional income alone would not have supported. The house’s purchase price: 13,000 guilders in 1639; Rembrandt paid approximately 1,200 guilders initially and signed a debt for the balance, which he never fully repaid and which was still being contested at his bankruptcy in 1656.

Saskia and Rembrandt had four children: three died in infancy. The fourth, Titus van Rijn (22 September 1641 – 4 September 1668), survived. Saskia died on 14 June 1642, aged 29, of tuberculosis, approximately six months after Titus’s birth. She died in the same year The Night Watch was completed. She never saw it publicly displayed. Rembrandt was 35 years old at her death; he had 27 more years to live, 14 of which he would spend in financial difficulty. See: Dutch Golden Age Home Decor 2026.

The Night Watch: The Commission and the Three Attacks

The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht, 1642) was commissioned by the Amsterdam civic guard company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (wearing a black suit with orange sash) and his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch (wearing the yellow suit) as a group portrait for the Kloveniersdoelen — the headquarters of the civic guard’s harquebusiers’ guild. Group portraits of civic guard companies (schuttersstukken) were a major Dutch Golden Age commission genre; Rembrandt had painted a successful group portrait (The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp) in 1632. The Night Watch commission: a larger and more ambitious group portrait of approximately 18 figures, plus several additional figures in the background, with a total of approximately 34 identifiable figures in the final composition.

The specific revolutionary quality of The Night Watch in the context of the schuttersstuk tradition: all previous civic guard group portraits depicted the figures in a static, rank-ordered arrangement — posed together in formal positions that clearly communicated each sitter’s social status and the group’s collective identity. Rembrandt depicted the Night Watch’s figures in motion: Captain Cocq and Lieutenant Ruytenburch are in the act of giving and receiving a command; the other figures are moving into position, checking their weapons, or responding to the activity. The painting is not a formal group portrait; it is a specific moment in a specific action. This formal decision — depicting motion rather than stasis, the moment of marshalling rather than the formal assembly — was Rembrandt’s specific artistic choice and, according to traditional art-historical narrative, the choice that began his commercial decline: some of the patrons who had commissioned and paid for their inclusion in the composition were displeased with the specific prominence Rembrandt gave them (or failed to give them).

The three attacks on The Night Watch:

1911 (bread knife): On 13 September 1911, a shoemaker named Sigmund Carl Urban entered the Rijksmuseum and attacked The Night Watch with a bread knife, making multiple horizontal cuts in the lower portion of the canvas. The attack was stopped by museum guards before extensive damage was done; the cuts were repaired in a subsequent conservation treatment. The specific motivation remains unclear; Urban was committed to a psychiatric institution.

1975 (twelve cuts with a bread knife): On 14 September 1975, Wilhelmus de Rijk, a secondary school teacher, entered the Rijksmuseum with a bread knife concealed under his clothing and made approximately 12 long cuts in the canvas before being restrained by museum visitors. The damage was severe: the cuts penetrated the canvas and the paint layer in multiple places, some cuts reaching 30 cm in length. The Rijksmuseum’s conservation department spent months repairing the damage; the repairs are largely invisible under normal viewing conditions but are detectable under technical analysis. De Rijk was found to be suffering from mental illness and was not criminally convicted.

1990 (acid attack): On 6 April 1990, an unemployed man entered the Rijksmuseum and sprayed sulphuric acid onto The Night Watch before being restrained by a security guard who tackled him to the floor. The acid contacted the painting’s surface in a scattered spray pattern. The varnish layer absorbed most of the acid damage; the underlying paint layer suffered limited but permanent damage in several areas. The conservation treatment that followed the acid attack is one of the most documented conservation procedures in modern art history. See: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam — The Night Watch.

The Commercial Decline: 1642–1656

The traditional art-historical narrative that The Night Watch’s perceived failure caused Rembrandt’s commercial decline has been significantly revised by 20th- and 21st-century scholarship. The specific evidence: Rembrandt continued to receive significant commissions and to sell works at high prices in the years immediately following The Night Watch (1642–1650). The specific causes of his financial difficulties are more accurately attributed to a combination of factors:

1. The unsustainable spending pattern of the 1630s. The Sint-Anthonisbreestraat house (13,000 guilders, never paid off); the extraordinary collection of art, costumes, weapons, and antiquities that he assembled as studio props (which the 1656 bankruptcy inventory estimated at thousands of guilders); and the lifestyle of a successful Amsterdam artist in the wealthiest city in the world produced a spending rate that his portrait income could not sustain, especially after the decline in high-value portrait commissions following Saskia’s death.

2. Changes in Dutch taste toward the later 1640s. The Dutch art market’s taste shifted in the 1640s and 1650s toward a smoother, more refined, and more “French-influenced” style — associated with Gerard ter Borch, Frans van Mieris, and Jan Steen — that was less compatible with Rembrandt’s increasingly loose, gestural, and psychologically intense mature style. His former students (Ferdinand Bol, Govaert Flinck) were receiving the major civic commissions that might have gone to Rembrandt in an earlier decade.

3. The death of Hendrick van Uylenburgh (Rembrandt’s primary art dealer and business connection). Rembrandt’s estrangement from the van Uylenburgh network after Saskia’s death removed his primary commercial infrastructure.

Bankruptcy of 1656: The Inventory and the Auction

On 25 July 1656, Rembrandt filed for cessio bonorum — a form of legal insolvency protection that was slightly less stigmatising than outright bankruptcy, allowing the debtor to transfer assets to creditors in lieu of payment while retaining a basic living income. The Chamber of Insolvent Estates (Desolate Boedelskamer) was appointed to manage Rembrandt’s assets and debts.

The 1656 inventory: the Chamber’s officials conducted a room-by-room inventory of the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat house’s contents. The inventory document (preserved in the Amsterdam City Archives and one of the most studied documents in Dutch art history) lists: more than 60 paintings (many by Rembrandt; many by other artists including Raphael, Rubens, and Giorgione); a large collection of antiquities, weapons, armour, coins, medals, and shells; natural history specimens; plaster casts; musical instruments; and a very large number of prints (including works by Lucas van Leyden, Hercules Seghers, and other printmakers Rembrandt had collected and studied).

The auction: Rembrandt’s collection was sold at auction in 1657 and 1658, producing far less than the estimated value of the inventory. The house was sold to a creditor in 1658; Rembrandt moved to a rented house on the Rozengracht in the Jordaan neighbourhood, a considerably less prestigious address. He lived there from 1658 until his death in 1669.

Hendrickje Stoffels and Titus: The Last Household

After Saskia’s death in 1642, Rembrandt’s household was initially managed by the nurse Geertje Dircx, who became his common-law partner. The relationship deteriorated; Rembrandt had Geertje committed to a house of correction (bridewell) in Gouda in 1650, a specific action that has attracted sustained moral criticism from scholars and biographers.

By approximately 1649, Hendrickje Stoffels (c.1626–1663) had entered the household as a maidservant and became Rembrandt’s common-law partner, his domestic companion, and eventually his business partner. Hendrickje was summoned before the Amsterdam Reformed Church council in 1654, charged with living in “whoredom” with a man without being married to him; she acknowledged the charge and was barred from taking communion. Rembrandt was not summoned (as a non-member of the Reformed Church, he was outside the council’s jurisdiction). Hendrickje and Rembrandt had a daughter, Cornelia, born in 1654.

After the bankruptcy, Hendrickje and Titus established a formal art-dealing partnership in 1660 that employed Rembrandt as their employee — a legal device designed to protect Rembrandt’s future earnings from his creditors. Rembrandt worked for Hendrickje and Titus’s firm; his income from sales legally belonged to the firm rather than to him, shielding it from seizure. Hendrickje died in 1663, probably from plague, aged approximately 37. Titus, Rembrandt’s son, died in September 1668, aged 26, shortly after marrying Magdalena van Loo. Rembrandt died thirteen months after Titus, in October 1669. He outlived two partners and both of his children who survived infancy.

The Final Decade and the Unmarked Grave

Rembrandt’s work in the final decade of his life — the 1660s — is universally regarded by art historians as his greatest period. The Jewish Bride (c.1665–1669), the Return of the Prodigal Son (c.1668–1669, Hermitage Saint Petersburg), and the self-portraits of the 1660s are among the most psychologically profound and technically refined paintings in the Western tradition. The specific quality of the late work: a freedom and looseness in the paint application, a willingness to leave marks visible as marks rather than blending them into an illusionistic surface, and a psychological depth in the figures’ expressions that goes beyond the already extraordinary depth of the 1630s and 1640s work. His late work is the product of a man who had lost his commercial reputation, his financial security, his wife, his partner, and finally his son — and who continued to paint.

Rembrandt died on 4 October 1669 in Amsterdam. The death record shows him as a pauper; the burial took place in the Westerkerk on 8 October 1669. He was buried in a rented grave — the cheapest available burial option, rented for a specific period after which the grave is turned over and the remains may be displaced. No permanent grave marker was placed; no tomb, no epitaph, no monument. His location in the Westerkerk is not precisely known; the grave was rented, not purchased, and was likely turned over in subsequent years. He was buried, in the most literal sense, without a permanent trace.

In 1906, a memorial plaque was placed in the Westerkerk to mark the approximate location of Rembrandt’s rented grave, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his birth. The plaque acknowledges that the exact location of his remains is unknown. See: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

The Night Watch: 363 × 437 cm, the 1715 Cut, the AI Reconstruction

The Night Watch’s current dimensions (363 × 437 cm) are not the original dimensions. In 1715, when the painting was moved from the Kloveniersdoelen to the Amsterdam Town Hall, the painting was cut on all four sides to fit the space available: the top strip (approximately 30 cm), the left strip (approximately 60 cm, removing two figures from the left edge of the composition and part of a third), a right strip (approximately 20 cm), and a bottom strip (approximately 20 cm). The left-side cut is the most significant: two complete figures and part of a third were removed from the composition’s left edge. The removed figures are known from the copy made by Gerrit Lundens (now at the National Gallery, London) before the 1715 cut — the Lundens copy depicts the full original composition including the removed left figures.

The 44.8 gigapixel photograph: In 2019, as part of the Rijksmuseum’s Operation Night Watch (the most extensive technical study of a single painting in history), a 44.8 gigapixel photograph of The Night Watch was produced using a custom 100-megapixel Hasselblad camera with a motorised scanning rig. The resulting image allows digital zoom to sub-millimetre resolution — individual brushstrokes, paint layer cracks, and canvas weave are visible at maximum zoom. The image is publicly available on the Rijksmuseum’s website.

The AI reconstruction of 2021: Using the Lundens copy as a reference and a convolutional neural network trained on Rembrandt’s own painting style (including the specific chromatic and brushwork qualities of The Night Watch), the Rijksmuseum’s research team produced an AI-generated reconstruction of the original composition’s four missing sides in 2021. The reconstruction was printed at full scale and placed around The Night Watch’s current frame to allow visitors to see the painting in approximately its original proportions for the first time since 1715. The AI reconstruction is not a restoration of the original; it is an extrapolation of what the original composition’s missing sections might have looked like, based on the Lundens copy and the Night Watch’s own visual characteristics. See: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam — Operation Night Watch. View Night Watch Triptych at DeckArts →

Night Watch for Home Decor

The Night Watch triptych is the dark academia canonical living room primary and the most historically eventful major painting in Western art. Above the primary sofa on forest green: warm amber militia coats advancing from the organic botanical dark under 2700K warm LED, in the specific atmospheric quality of the Dutch Golden Age’s guild hall display condition.

On forest green (the canonical Night Watch installation): The warm amber and ochre of Captain Cocq’s black suit, Lieutenant Ruytenburch’s yellow coat, and the figure’s warm flesh tones advance from the organic botanical dark at maximum warm-cool chromatic contrast. The forest green’s organic botanical dark is the most specifically appropriate wall colour for a Dutch Golden Age composition: it corresponds to the warm oil-lamp-lit guild hall’s specific atmospheric quality. The most historically specific domestic art installation available at DeckArts. See: Forest Green Wall Art 2026.

Best positions: Primary sofa wall in the living room (155–165 cm, triptych ~$310); primary library wall in the home library (155–165 cm); above the dining table in a dark dining room (155–165 cm).

Four Complete Night Watch Programmes

Programme 1: The Dark Academia Living Room (~$310)
Forest green primary sofa wall + Night Watch triptych (~$310) at 155–165 cm + warm cream sofa + dark teak side table + aged brass arc floor lamp (2700K) + directed 2700K track spot on the triptych (separate dimmer). The Dutch Golden Age guild hall above the domestic gathering space. “Three attacks. 1715 cut. AI reconstruction. Rembrandt died in a rented room, buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.” Total art: ~$310.

Programme 2: The Dark Academia Library (~$590)
Forest green all walls + Night Watch triptych (~$310) primary library wall + Wanderer single (~$140) facing the reading chair + Medusa single (~$140) at the entrance. Three centuries; three biographical programmes. Total art: ~$590. See: Wall Art for a Home Library 2026.

Programme 3: The Gallery Wall (~$590)
Forest green wall + Night Watch triptych (~$310) anchor + Wanderer single (~$140) at 8 cm left + Melencolia I single (~$140) at 8 cm right. Total gallery width: ~126 cm (sofa 160–200 cm). Total art: ~$590. See: Gallery Wall 2026.

Programme 4: The Dining Dark Room (~$310)
Near-black or warm charcoal dining room walls + Night Watch triptych (~$310) above the dining table at 155–165 cm + beeswax candle on the dining table + directed 2700K warm LED spot. Total art: ~$310.

FAQ

Who was Rembrandt and what happened to him?

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669): born in Leiden, Netherlands; became the most sought-after portrait painter in Amsterdam in the 1630s; married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634 (she died 1642, aged 29); painted The Night Watch in 1642; declared bankruptcy (cessio bonorum) in 1656, aged 50; sold his collection and house at auction 1657–1658; moved to a rented house in the Jordaan; lived with common-law partner Hendrickje Stoffels (died 1663) and son Titus (died 1668, aged 26); died 4 October 1669, aged 63, in a rented room; buried in an unmarked rented pauper’s grave in the Westerkerk, Amsterdam. His Night Watch (1642, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) was attacked in 1911 (bread knife), 1975 (12 cuts), and 1990 (acid). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. DeckArts Night Watch triptych from ~$310.

How many times has the Night Watch been attacked?

Three documented attacks: (1) 13 September 1911: shoemaker Sigmund Carl Urban entered the Rijksmuseum and made multiple cuts with a bread knife before being stopped; (2) 14 September 1975: secondary school teacher Wilhelmus de Rijk made approximately 12 cuts with a bread knife before being restrained by museum visitors; the damage required months of conservation treatment; (3) 6 April 1990: an unemployed man sprayed sulphuric acid on the painting’s surface; the varnish layer absorbed most of the damage. In addition, the painting was cut on all four sides in 1715 when it was moved to fit a smaller space in the Amsterdam Town Hall, removing approximately two complete figures from the left side. The 2021 AI reconstruction used the Lundens copy (National Gallery, London) and a convolutional neural network to recreate the missing left section. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. DeckArts from ~$310.

Did the Night Watch ruin Rembrandt’s career?

The traditional narrative — that the Night Watch’s patrons were displeased with Rembrandt’s dynamic composition and that this discontent triggered his commercial decline — has been significantly revised by modern scholarship. The specific evidence: Rembrandt continued to receive significant commissions and sell major works for several years after 1642. His financial difficulties are more accurately attributed to his unsustainable spending in the 1630s (the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat house debt, the large collection purchases), the death of Saskia in 1642 and the loss of her dowry network, and shifts in Dutch taste toward a smoother “French-influenced” style in the 1640s–1650s. The Night Watch’s role in Rembrandt’s decline was overstated by 19th-century biographers; his bankruptcy 14 years later is better explained by the compound financial decisions of the 1630s. DeckArts Night Watch triptych from ~$310. See: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Article Summary

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) is the most comprehensively documented case of the gap between critical acclaim and financial success in Western art history. Eight specific biographical facts: (1) Born Leiden 1606; father a miller; studied under Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam 1624–1625 (six months that defined his mature style); (2) became the most sought-after Amsterdam portraitist by the mid-1630s, charging ~500 guilders per portrait; (3) married Saskia van Uylenburgh 1634; she brought a 40,750 guilder dowry; she died 1642 aged 29; (4) purchased the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat house 1639 for 13,000 guilders and never fully paid the debt; (5) declared cessio bonorum (insolvency) 1656 aged 50; collection and house sold at auction 1657–1658; (6) The Night Watch (1642) attacked three times: 1911 (bread knife), 1975 (12 cuts), 1990 (acid); cut on all four sides in 1715; AI reconstruction 2021; (7) son Titus died 1668 aged 26; Rembrandt died October 1669 aged 63 in a rented room, buried in an unmarked rented pauper’s grave; (8) his final decade’s work — Jewish Bride, Return of the Prodigal Son, late self-portraits — is universally regarded as his greatest. DeckArts Night Watch triptych (~$310): on forest green, above the primary sofa at 155–165 cm, directed 2700K warm LED. Ships from Berlin. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.

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