In 1642 Rembrandt painted the group portrait of the arquebusiers under Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, for the Kloveniersdoelen in Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum calls it his largest canvas: oil on canvas, more than three by four and a half metres. Cocq, dressed in black, orders his lieutenant to set the company in motion. Men are finding their places. A girl in the light is the guild’s mascot. Rembrandt was the first to fill a civic guard piece with so much action: not a row of neat busts, but a moment in which one person is just saying something and another is just doing something.
That it later came to be called the Night Watch is down to the dark varnish and the painting’s reputation, not because it shows a night-time raid. By day, citizens drilled as a civic guard; the painting belonged in a hall where those very men gathered. Light falls on a hand, a collar, a child. The rest is allowed to recede. Movement arises because not everyone is ready at the same time. Look at the direction of the pikes and at who is still busy with his gun. That is where the march lies, even before the first step beyond the frame.
First stand far enough back for the company to become a single cloud. Then move closer until you are following only the captain’s hand. The painting happens between those two viewpoints.
Self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn.
Rembrandt was the first to show the civic guardsmen as they spring into action, not standing in a still row.
