EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Museums Boijmans Van Beuningen
Titus at his Desk( 1655) depicts Rembrandt’ s young son, who was only 10 months old when his mother died.
National Gallery
Rembrandt’ s Self Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669.
Gemaldegalerie Berlin
Rembrandt’ s Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels, 1656.
The year 1655, when Rembrandt painted The Slaughtered Ox, saw Geertje’ s release from the Spinhuis. Rembrandt never bothered to make his promised annual payments while she was imprisoned, but now that she was free, he feared she would go to court and force him to make good on his obligation. However, a broken Geertje unwillingly obliged Rembrandt by dying in 1656“ before,” writes Schama,“ she could witness the painter’ s humiliation as a bankrupt.”
1655 was also the year that the tax authorities caught up with Rembrandt and forced him to sell the contents of his house in order to pay his back taxes. While the great artist was unable to control his spending, he was adept at staying one step ahead of his creditors. One of his favorite ploys was to transfer the ownership of his assets to Hendrickje and Titus, denying his creditors access to them. While this bought him time, he never used the reprieve to correct his financial improprieties.
Rembrandt biographer Charles L. Mee suggests that the artist’ s“ patrons became irritated with his spendthrift ways, his broken promises to deliver paintings for which he had been paid, his constant borrowing of money that he didn’ t bother to pay back.” Rembrandt tried to paint his
way out of his financial problems, but his arrogance along with changing tastes in painting styles conspired against him.
He was forced to sell his home in February 1658 for considerably less than the original purchase price. Then, in 1662, Rembrandt made the painstaking decision to sell Saskia’ s grave.
The bubonic plague took Hendrickje in 1663 and Titus in 1668. Only his daughter Cornelia survived him when he died a year later. Schama writes,“ There was no lengthy tolling of bells …; no outpouring of eulogies …; no banquets, poems, chants of sorrow or prayers said for the repose of the soul from one end of the city to another as there had been for Peter Paul Rubens 4; just a box lowered into a rented hole in the church floor.”
It is tempting to dismiss Rembrandt’ s financial failure as a function of his artistic temperament. However, Irish economist David McWilliams argues that,“ Artists and entrepreneurs are blessed with similar outlooks; the type of minds that make art are also the type that create businesses.” McWilliams points to Irish author James Joyce’ s cinema venture in Dublin to support his argument. Although Joyce struggled with finances for most of his life, he displayed surprising business acumen after his sister, who was visiting
the expatriate in Trieste, Italy, remarked that Trieste had multiple cinemas, but the much larger Dublin had none.
Joyce immediately saw an opportunity to make his fortune and set about to convince a group of Trieste businessmen to fund an Irish cinema venture. According to McWilliams,“ The contract Joyce negotiated reveals a canny financial operator. He convinced his partners to give him 10 % of the equity and profits, although he didn’ t invest a penny himself.” Joyce set off to Dublin, where he personally took charge of the cinema project. By all accounts, the December 1909 opening of Dublin’ s first cinema was a success, but the fortune Joyce envisioned failed to materialize. In his chronicle of Joyce’ s years in Trieste, author John McCourt argues that Joyce’ s Dublin cinema venture“ stands as evidence against the notion that he did not know how to handle money.”
In his recent Financial History article,“ J. M. W. Turner: Celebrated Painter and Unrecognized Financial Arbitrageur,” Andrew Odlyzko analyzes landscape artist J. M. W. Turner’ s successful arbitrage operations in British government bonds in 1829 and 1847. He bolsters McWilliams’ s contention that artists and entrepreneurs share much in common when he concludes that,“ Turner violated
www. MoAF. org | Spring / Summer 2026 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 11