People in the Sun, 1963 by Edward Hopper

People in the Sun are hotel guests who have been tempted out onto the patio to bask in the sun. They seem to take no notice of the scenery around them. Apparently they do not feel warm, for none of them has taken off a jacket or sweater. Perhaps they are even freezing. Wanting to give themselves over to the sun, they have inadvertantly put themselves at its mercy. And the sun reveals all - their inadequacy, the shallowness of their emotional and mental lives. Evidently they had hoped to impress each other with their fashionable attire, but now no one seems to notice or care. Only one man emphasizes his difference from the rest. He has seated himself a little behind, as if in the lee of the row of others, to concentrate on his book. But the cold sunlight holds him in its grip as well.

Rembrandt enfolds his figures in a protective darkness as if in a mantle. His dusky chiaroscuro mercifully hides the things he does not wish to show. Rembrandt's Paintings seem to say: what takes place in a person's heart must always remain obscure.