CURIOUS TALE

Art Sleuths Solve Centuries-Old Mystery Behind Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ Dog

New details in the Old Master’s legendary painting have been identified nearly 400 years later.

The barking dog featured in the bottom-right-hand corner of Rembrandt’s legendary painting The Night Watch was likely copied directly from a similar work by a lesser-known artist, art historians now believe. Anne Lenders, a curator at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, where the painting is housed, made the announcement on Tuesday after spotting the near-identical animal in a sketch drawn by painter Adriaen van de Venne in 1619, decades before Rembrandt’s famous work. “Immediately when I saw this dog, I thought of ‘The Night Watch‚” Lenders said. “The resemblance is so strong that at the very first moment I thought he (Rembrandt) must have used this…The head turns in exactly the same angle with the mouth slightly opened. Both dogs have long hair and ears that hang vertically.” Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s general director, explained that the practise was not considered plagiarism in the 17th century but was a respected method of learning and competition. (Van de Venne’s sketch was also copied by another artist of the time in an engraving made for a book cover.) “We always think of Rembrandt as a genius who created things out of nothing,” Dibbits said. “But he borrowed inspiration and then changed it around.”