Rembrandt van Rijn

by Malcolm Bell

CHAPTER VIII

HISTORY OF THE ETCHINGS

We have seen how Rembrandt the painter, after having risen to the foremost place among his fellow-craftsmen in Holland, fell a victim to the always unaccountable change of fashion that has cast a blight upon many another man. Now, however, that we come to consider his etched work, we have, to some extent, a different tale to tell. From the first the products of his needle seem to have been appreciated and sought after, in certain, though perhaps limited, circles. Houbraken mentions Clement de Jonghe, whose shrewd yet kindly face is found among the gallery of portraits etched by Rembrandt, Jan Pietersen Zoomer, and Pieter de la Tombe, as having made collections of his etchings; and in the inventory of the property left by the first of these at his death, on February 11th, 1679, we find a list of seventy-four plates etched by Rembrandt; but it is not therefore to be hastily concluded that Rembrandt himself ever made any important addition to his income by the sale of them.

Indeed, the chief foundation of the belief can be shown to be frail and untrustworthy. This is the familiar title of the etching, "Christ healing the Sick," which has been known for many years as "The Hundred Guilder Print," that having been, according to the story, the sum the artist obtained for a single proof. The amount, even if he had obtained it, was hardly excessive—some nine pounds; but the facts show clearly that he never did. He exchanged a copy, still in existence, with his friend Jan Zoomer, who has left in writing on the back of it, "Given me by my intimate friend Rembrandt in exchange for 'The Pest' of M. Anthony," to which he may possibly have attached the value of a hundred guilders, though there is not a particle of evidence for even this. Gersaint, when making the catalogue, published in 1751, after his death, by Helle and Glomy, was informed that the famous proof was exchanged with a Roman merchant, and the equivalent, like Falstaff s men in buckram, had swelled to seven engravings, which were definitely valued at one hundred guilders; and thence the tradition and the name arose. What, one wonders, would the gossips, who gasped amazed at such a price, have thought could some seer have succeeded in making them believe that, little more than a hundred years later, in 1858, that very same proof with old Jan Zoomer's writing still upon it would be competed for so fiercely at public auction, that M. Dutuit paid cheerfully for it eleven hundred pounds; while even that was not a record price, since another copy was sold the year before at the Palmer sale for eleven hundred and eighty.

CHRIST HEALING THE SICK. (B. 74)
(1649-50)

Still, though this piece of evidence must be abandoned, there would seem to be no doubt that the etchings were admired even in his lifetime, and, from the fact that Clement de Jonghe and Zoomer were art-dealers, we may fairly conclude that part at least of their collections appertained to their stock-in-trade. It is scarcely probable, indeed, that such highly-finished works as the larger "Raising of Lazarus," "Christ healing the Sick," "Christ preaching," "The Three Crosses," "The Good Samaritan," "The Three Trees," and others, landscapes in especial, were carried out without any subsequent attempts on Rembrandt's part to profit by them; and there is good reason for supposing that the portraits of Jan Uijtenbogaerd and Jan Cornelis Sylvius with their inscriptions and laudatory verses, were intended for sale among the followers and admirers of the two eminent ministers; but the fact remains that we can only assert with any confidence that two out of all the etchings were expressly made for publication, "The Descent from the Cross," and the "Ecce Homo," and neither of these, though signed by Rembrandt "cum privilegio," as issuing from his studio, and executed under his directions, according to the custom of the day, was worked upon by him to any great extent.

The numerous other portraits, the four illustrations to Manasseh ben Israel's work, Piedra Gloriosa, and that to Der Zeeværts-Lof, were doubtless commissions, but the payments were probably not large, since we found in the proposal made by Dirck van Cattenburch, in 1654, that an etched plate "not less finished than that of Six," was estimated at no more than four hundred florins, which, considering the amount of work entailed, was not magnificent.

When we have recalled the partnership formally entered into between Hendrickje and Titus on December 15, 1660, which has already been explained in telling the story of the artist's life, we have come to the end of the reasons for concluding that the artist made money by his etching needle.

Whence, then, it may be asked, the various proofs now in existence, the first and second, third and fourth states for which collectors pay such surprising prices, prices more often regulated by the rarity of the state than by its special artistic merits? Perhaps some of them were put into circulation by the firm of Hendrickje and Titus. There is, certainly, no mention of the plates in the inventory of the sale, and it is therefore possible that this pathetic little association for the support of a broken-down artist may have found it profitable in a small way to issue new impressions of these earlier completed plates, though it is significant in this connection, unless we can accept the theory suggested before, that Rembrandt's eyesight was failing, that at the very time when etchings were most needed he ceased to produce them.