Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Rembrandt van Rijn painted about three hundred canvases, three hundred etchings and eighty self-portraits, and died insolvent. Born in Leiden in 1606, the son of a miller, he was the only one of ten children sent to Latin school and university, which he left after a few months to be apprenticed. He moved to Amsterdam in 1631 into a city with money and no aristocracy, where portraits were commissioned by merchants and civic bodies. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp in 1632 made him the most sought-after portraitist in the Dutch Republic. He married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634, bought a large house on the Breestraat, and collected armour, shells, prints and antiquities compulsively. The Night Watch of 1642 is a group portrait of a militia company that refuses to behave like one: instead of ranked figures, it shows a company assembling in motion, some faces obscured, lit theatrically. The story that it ruined him is a myth — it was paid for and admired — but his manner did move away from what patrons wanted. Saskia died that year. Three of their four children died in infancy. He lived with Geertje Dircx, who sued him for breach of promise and whom he had committed to a house of correction, and then with Hendrickje Stoffels, who was summoned before the church council for living with him. He was declared insolvent in 1656 and his collection was sold. The late work is thickly painted, loosely handled and unsparing — the self-portraits record ageing without vanity. Hendrickje died in 1663 and his son Titus in 1668. He died in 1669 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

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