[13] B Benesch 1236, Farmstead with a Hay Barn, Copenhagen, about 1650.
[14] B Benesch 1226, Farm Buildings Beside a Road with Distant Farmstead, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Hofstede de Groot 1138, about 1650, with later additions. Ludwig Münz (Rembrandt's Etchings, 2 vols., London, 1952, no. 159, vol. 2, p. 84) cites two drawings, one in the Ashmolean, one in the University Gallery, Oxford. Since the two museums are now one and the same, Münz appears to have confused two listings of the same drawing. Mr. Hugh Macandrew of the Ashmolean Museum has very kindly confirmed, in a letter to the author, that in their collection there is only the one drawing which is similar to this print. There is yet another drawing, Farm with Hay Barn, in the Bonnat collection at the Louvre, Paris, Hofstede de Groot 764, which is cited by Hind as a study sketch. Though very similar to this print, in reverse, it is considered a school piece by both Lugt and Benesch. It is quite possible that one of Rembrandt's pupils accompanied him on his walks and sketched many of the same subjects as the master. The drawing reproduced in Lugt, Mit Rembrandt ..., op. cit., fig. 87, is also not by Rembrandt.
[15] J Joachim von Sandrart, a former pupil of Rembrandt, writing in 1675, quoted in Hofstede de Groot, Die ... Urkunden, op. cit., no. 329, p. 392.
[16] T The plate for the print under discussion here is not known to have survived. There are, however, still some 79 Rembrandt plates whose present locations are known. Of these, 75 are in the collection of Robert Lee Humber, on deposit at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina. These are discussed at some length by André Charles Coppier (Les eaux-fortes de Rembrandt, Paris, 1922, pp. 94-96). He gives the chemical content of the plate for the Presentation in the Temple (Hind 162, about 1640), as 95% copper with impurities of tin, lead, zinc, arsenic, and silver. This may presumably be taken as typical. Münz, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 47, gives a listing of the surviving plates, but mistakenly presumes the Humber plates to be in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. As a matter of interest, the plate of the print, The Gold-Weigher (Hind 167), said by Münz to be in the Rosenwald collection, Philadelphia, is not and never has been in that collection. It is completely unknown to Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald and his curator. Its present whereabouts is unknown to the author.
[17] TThe Whole Art of Drawing, Painting, Limning, and Etching. Collected out of the Choicest Italian and German Authors.... Originally invented and written by the famous Italian Painter Odoardo Fialetti, Painter of Boloign. Published for the Benefit of all ingenuous Gentlemen and Artists by Alexander Brown Practitioner. London, Printed for Peter Stint at the Signe of the White Horse in Giltspurre Street, and Simon Miller at the Starre in St. Paul's Churchyard, MDCLX. Page 33. London, 1660. Quoted by Münz, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 208, who first discovered the reference. Since Fialetti died in 1638, the reference to Rembrandt's ground is likely to be by Brown or an anonymous contemporary editor.
[18] Abraham Bosse, Traicté des manieres de graver en taille douce ..., Paris, 1645, p. 41. Bosse's soft-ground formula, for comparison's sake, is three parts wax, two parts mastic, and one part asphaltum, which is very close to the cited Rembrandt ground.
[19] N Numerous similar grounds are given in E. S. Lumsden, The Art of Etching (London: Seeley Service and Co., 1924); reprint (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962), pp. 35-38.
[20] Loc. cit. (footnote 17).
[21] Some etchers, however, prefer this effect. Cf. Lumsden, op. cit., p. 42.
[22] Münz, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 13, quotes this letter without giving the source. Evidently this is the first written reference to white ground.