Notes

As one of the towering figures in the history of art, Rembrandt, a miller’s son from the university town of Leiden, was an artist of unmatched genius. Equally gifted as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman, Rembrandt proved himself to be as skillful at making portraits as he was at creating religious and mythological narratives. His landscapes are just as remarkable as his rare still lifes and subjects detailing everyday life.

Widely recognized as the greatest practitioner of the etching technique in the history of art, Rembrandt created 300 prints that constitute a body of work unparalleled in richness and beauty. During his lifetime, Rembrandt’s extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands.

Printed after the addition of the diagonal shading to the meadow behind the angler at the right, and the shading to the meadow at the edge of the wood at the left, showing touches of burr on the vertical shading in the water at the center.

In this etching we see depicted in the middle ground one of the country homes of the tax collector Jan Uytenbogaert, the subject of Rembrandt’s portrait etching of 1639 “Jan Uytenbogaert, the Gold-Weigher” (Bartsch 281).  This country home, west of Amsterdam proper is identified as the House with the Tower, even though here the dome and spire which can be seen in two other etchings depicting the house (B. 234, 236) have been removed leaving only the square tower.  Rembrandt has taken somewhat uncharacteristic liberties with the landscape in which the house is positioned.  Nearly all of the artist’s landscapes are records of real views.  However, here he has taken the liberty to add a fantastic mountain view in the background, and the flat Dutch polder scene with fishermen in the foreground. In his 1751-52 catalogue, Gersaint describes this and the following print under the same number in the belief that they were originally part of one plate.