Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is considered one of the greatest visual artists of all time… only surpassed by that guy who drew Calvin and Hobbes…
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Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. After his lifetime, they stopped watching him and he could’ve easily slipped out of Holland.
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Rembrandt was born with the name “Rembrant”. He added the silent ‘d’ in 1633 because he’d gotten it as a birthday present a few years earlier and didn’t know what to do with it.
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Geertje Dircx sued Rembrandt for breach of promise in 1649 but the suit was put on hold until the presiding judge could figure out how to pronounce her name…
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Ultimately, Dircx won the suit but, in retaliation, was put into a mental institution for five years. This is what historians call a “Pyrrhic Victory”…
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Rembrandt’s The Night Watch has been vandalized by the insane twice during the twentieth century. A fifth of the painting was cut away so that it would fit the wall in its second home. It is his most famous painting due to its staying power. Monet’s Water Lilies would’ve given up after the first stabbing…
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Rembrandt’s The Night Watch was slashed with a knife and sprayed with acid in two separate incidents. Rembrandt’s Danae was both slashed with a knife and sprayed with acid in a single incident because SOME PEOPLE CAN MULTITASK…
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Saul and David, a painting by Rembrandt, was cut in two by an art dealer who thought he could get more money selling the two pieces. The two pieces were reunited but backwards so the name of the painting was changed to David and Saul…
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Of more than three hundred paintings attributable to Rembrandt, there is only one eagle depicted and that eagle is abducting a toddler. It’s stereotyping and stereotyping is WRONG…
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Rembrandt was buried in a pauper’s grave. The pauper was reportedly pretty miffed.
Potatoes and the Promise of More Potatoes 
You’ve just proper made me chuckle, thank you 🙏 😊
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Thanks! That’s why I write these.
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Keep ‘em coming ❤️👍
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Water Lilies may have been a wuss, but I bet Van Gogh’s sunflowers would have given them a run for their money.
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It’s weird that Van Gogh paintings don’t get vandalized. They do get stolen a lot.
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Not sure if there is anything more rewarding than discovering what to do with a birthday present – especially several years later.
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I know! It happened to me and that boa constrictor my son bought me. Turns out, you can make stew out of them… WHO KNEW?
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I stared at that lady’s name trying to figure out how to say it, gave up, and then read the joke was the name. Cracked me up 🙂 That is one heck of a name!
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She was a wet-nurse…. but I wasn’t touching THAT.
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They sure like chopping up his paintings.
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It’s weird, right? Like that guy who went at the Pieta with a hammer… Why?
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Makes you glad you’re a writer doesn’t it?
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Yep… the only one who damages MY work is ME!
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My paintings have never been stolen OR vandalized. Actually, they’ve never been painted. It’s just my way of saving desperate would-be art thieves and vandals from temptation. But now I’m painting myself into a corner with this comment, so suppose I just brush off the whole thing, and Gogh.
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If you Gogh, you’ll never make lots of Monet…
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I think he would have been a great Instagrammed. I mean just imagine not only the quantity of posts he’d do but the amount of comment’s he’d inspire
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I think the scandal of the wet-nurse might do him in…
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Perhaps 😄
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Geertje Dircx was really the origin of many Dutch swear words, inspired by the frivolous lawsuit and the cruel nature of her parents in naming her that…
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The name “Dircx” was established in the sixteenth century when Sweden had imposed a vowel embargo on Holland…
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I wonder if the first ‘Dircx’ only learnt a few letters, thereby shortening his family’s esteemed ‘Dirccenhøllingsberg’ to the sad, short version it was in Rembrandt’s day.
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Maybe they shortened it at Ellis Island and she forgot to unshorten it after she went back to Holland and the seventeenth century…
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