Beggar Images Seen through Glass

No one looking for a handout seemed to stand nearby as my wife and I viewed many of Rembrandt’s etchings of beggars.

Some time ago, Carol and I inspected some of the Dutch artist’s etchings at the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh. An etching is produced this way: a drawing is engraved on a metal plate; ink is applied to the plate: paper is pressed against the inked plate to produce an image on the paper.

Standing alongside a few Saturday afternoon museumgoers who appeared well fed, well-cared-for and even well-to-do, I scanned small images that were framed and under glass. They were drawn by Rembrandt between 1629 and 1654 and had become part of a modern-day traveling show called “Rembrandt Van Rijn: Sordid and Sacred, The Beggars in Rembrandt’s Etchings.”

The exhibit featured 35 small prints – one was only slightly larger than two inches by two inches – from the John Villarino Collection.

I doubt that many real beggars – maybe none – saw the traveling art show. Probably no one we would classify as a beggar visited the exhibition and laid weary eyes on Rembrandt’s images of alms seekers.

I doubt that anyone working at a rescue mission or social services office said to fellow workers, “The museum is showing artwork that features beggars. Maybe we ought to take some of our clients to see that show.”

No, I don’t think anyone thought about bussing beggars to review Rembrandt’s renderings.

Dutch society of Rembrandt’s day esteemed work, thrift and self-restraint and looked down on beggars. Artist Hieronymus Bosch, a Rembrandt predecessor and fellow Dutchman, painted beggars as almost indistinguishable from his depicted demons, says writer Gary Schwartz.

Rembrandt often drew and painted pictures of poor people. Critics say he usually portrayed beggars with “sanctity and individuality.” He often used images of beggars to portray Bible characters.

Dr. John I. Durham, in his book “The Biblical Rembrandt,” presents Rembrandt’s intrigue with Christian faith.

“His first artworks were on Biblical themes, as was his last painting,” Durham says. Of Rembrandt’s known work (285-290 paintings, 300 etchings and 1380 drawings), 40 percent involve Biblical themes.

Rembrandt made many depictions of the “return” scene from Jesus’ parable about a lost, or prodigal, son who asked for his inheritance, spent it foolishly and returned to his father’s embrace (Luke, 15).

Perhaps Rembrandt saw himself as a spiritual beggar drawn to the “there but for the grace of God go I” images of street people.

Schwartz suggests that Rembrandt’s humane image of the poor and disabled may have “contributed at some time or other in the course of history to the kinder treatment of real beggars.”

As a child, I heard the thirteenth century nursery rhyme “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark; the beggars are coming to town….” I listened to Bible stories about poor people and knew funds-challenged residents who lived in my rural South Carolina community.

The first street beggar I remember seeing was an African-American man who sat on a sidewalk and leaned against a building fronting the main street in the City of Greenville, S.C. That man wore black leather “holders” to cover what was left of legs amputated close to his bulky torso. I never heard him speak when someone dropped coins into a cigar box sitting in front of his stumps.

My grandparents sold “real cow’s milk and butter” to a few Greenville city folk on Saturday mornings, and I, as a child, often accompanied them. We would make our rounds to customers and then shop at Woolworth’s and other stores. I could hardly pass that main street beggar man without thinking of this line from a poem my childhood pastor, the Rev. James H. Thompson, often quoted: “I complained I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

As I stood in an art museum and viewed Rembrandt’s centuries-old images of beggars, I wondered how many of us prefer to see poverty artistically interpreted and viewed through glass – the glass of television screens.

I suppose art still helps us deal with life.