Hendrickje Stoffels (a servant some 20 years younger than Rembrandt, who entered the household in about 1645 and bore Rembrandt two children) and Titus formed an art firm with Rembrandt as their employee, which protected the artist from his creditors. His collections were sold and he had to move to lodgings in a poorer part of the city. In the 1640s, Rembrandt concentrated more on religious paintings and landscapes, but by 1656 he had fallen into financial difficulties and was declared bankrupt. Samuel van Hoogstraten, the painter and art theorist, wrote of it: 'It is so painter-like in thought, so dashing in movement, and so powerful' that the pictures beside which it hung were made to seem 'like playing cards'. In the same year, Rembrandt finished his most famous picture, The Night Watch (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). In 1639, he bought an imposing house, now the Rembrandt museum, and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, but Saskia herself died in 1642.
Of the four children Saskia bore him, only his son Titus (1641–68), who became one of his favourite models, lived longer than two months. In 1634, Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of a picture-dealer. Among his commissions for religious works were five paintings depicting scenes of Christ's Passion (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) for Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Over his lifetime, he also painted about 80 self-portraits. He soon established himself as the leading portrait painter in the city, producing both portraits of individuals and group portraits such as the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632, The Hague, Mauritshuis). In 1631-2, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam and remained there for the rest of his life. By 1625, he was working as an independent artist in Leiden. He studied first with Jacob van Swanenburgh in Leiden and then with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch painter, etcher, draughtsman and one of the greatest artists of the seventeenth century.
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