Short answers, pulled from the story.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman, born on the 15th of July 1606 in Leiden and died on the 4th of October 1669. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art.
Rembrandt's surviving works are estimated at about three hundred paintings, just under three hundred etchings, and several hundred drawings. Around forty of the paintings are autograph self-portraits, alongside a few drawings and thirty-one self-portrait etchings.
The Night Watch is Rembrandt's most famous work, formally titled The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, painted between 1640 and 1642. It is not set at night, its darkness coming from ageing, and it depicts a ceremony rather than a patrol, commissioned for the hall of the Kloveniersdoelen.
Rembrandt lived beyond his means, spending heavily on art, prints, and rare items, and a 13,000 guilder mortgage on his Breestraat house caused lasting trouble. In July 1656 he declared insolvency through a court arrangement called cessio bonorum, and by February 1658 his house was sold at a foreclosure auction.
Rembrandt ran a large workshop and encouraged students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing them to sell as originals, and his style was easy for talented pupils to imitate. The Rembrandt Research Project, begun in 1968, has reassessed his attributions, removing and re-adding works as scholarship shifts.
Rembrandt is known for chiaroscuro, a theatrical use of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio or the Dutch Caravaggisti. In his portraits he angled the face so the ridge of the nose divided brightly illuminated areas from shadow, creating a face partially eclipsed.