Author Terry Lee Marzell takes a field trip to the Rembrandt museum house located in Amsterdam.

Teaching always takes on a new dimension when it can be combined with a field trip.  This is what I would recommend for educators who want their students to learn more about famous Dutch artist Rembrandt. Certainly it is costly and difficult to arrange a field trip for students, but you could do the next best thing, which is visit the place yourself, and then share what you have learned with your class. A wonderful place for a field trip is the Rembrandt Museum House in Amsterdam.

A visit to the house offers wonderful insights into how upper-class citizens lived their lives in 17th-century Netherlands. Rembrandt’s home is located in a Dutch artists’ enclave which included the residences of Rembrandt’s teacher, Pieter Lastman, and fellow artists Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy and Pieter Codde. Rembrandt lived in his 17th-century home for 20 years, and it was here that he painted several of his most famous portraits and his masterpiece The Night Watch, which is now on display in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

The author’s husband, Hal Marzell, stands next to an easel located in the personal art studio of the famous painter Rembrandt.

Unfortunately, bankruptcy forced a debt-ridden Rembrandt to sell the house to pay his creditors in 1658. At the time, a complete inventory was made listing all the furniture, art, and other Rembrandt possessions that were liquidated. Museum curators used this inventory to refurbish the home with period furnishings and artifacts. The museum also owns the most complete collection of Rembrandt etchings in existence.

A tour of the house reveals three floors of remarkable rooms, including Rembrandt’s bedroom, his personal art studio, the studio where he gave lessons to his students, a room where he made engravings, a showroom where he met with his clients and displayed the paintings he offered for sale, and a room intriguingly referred to as his “closet,” where he kept his collection of plaster casts and objects d’art.

To learn more about this wonderful historic house, you can visit the museum’s website at www.rembrandthuis.