Notes

In 1641, Rembrandt made two landscape etchings of the vicinity of Amsterdam. Both images are almost equal in size and belong to his largest landscape prints. Here, he has chosen to depict a sizeable farm set in the foreground of a typically flat Dutch landscape. The cottage and tree, the two children playing at the door, the two ducks along the water side, and other elements that appear close to the viewer are very deeply bitten, while the distant town has been only lightly etched. Rembrandt would have covered this latter area and then re-immersed the plate into acid in order to create this sharp contrast between foreground and background. It is a technique he gradually abandoned in his later prints, preferring other ways of creating this sense of distance.

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.