Dr.Tulp desired a picture of himself performing an operation, and Rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever since.
Ten years later Rembrandt painted another Doelen or Regent picture which, under the erroneous title of _The Night Watch_, is to-day the chief attraction of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam.

This time it was not a group of surgeons, but a company of Amsterdam musketeers marching out under the leadership of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq.

In all these civic or military Regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist's fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money's worth in the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form.

It is an old quarrel between artist and public.

Mr.Abbey had to face it in his Coronation picture; Mr.Bacon had to face it in his _Return of the C.I.V.'s_; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator.