Prints and their makers: essays on engravers and etchers old and modern

by Unknown

With the Windmill and the Cottage and Hay-barn, both dated 1641, we come to a group of plates which are typical of Rembrandt’s landscape manner in etching. Close to these in date, presumably, are the little Amsterdam and the Cottage and Large Tree. Mr. Hind, in the latest catalogue of the etchings, follows von Seidlitz in assigning the Amsterdam to 1640, though Dr. Six maintains that the absence of a tower not finished till 1638 proves it to be earlier than that year. Rembrandt, however, was quite capable of abolishing towers to suit his composition. The simplest materials presented by the country-side are used in these etchings. Though Rembrandt never seems to have cared to make pictures of such subjects, he made a great number of drawings of them. A wonderful series of these sketches, once in the possession of his pupil, Govert Flinck, is at Chatsworth; and numbers of course in the great public collections. These summary small drawings, made with a reed-pen and sepia, and sometimes with a wash of sepia added, do not appeal to every one, certainly not to those whose pleasure is in the external aspect of things, the softness of verdure, the glitter of trees; to say nothing of the want of grandeur and impressiveness in the scenes themselves, the absence of anything scenic, such as makes the most obvious appeal, whether in nature or art.

But the more one studies drawings, and the more one becomes familiar with the qualities which differentiate the first-rate from the second, the higher one inclines to rank these sketches. For one thing, they are almost miraculous in the certainty with which the reality of things is evoked, and the planes of recession indicated. Slight as is the means employed, rough and summary as is the stroke of the blunt pen, sometimes even with what seems a superficial clumsiness or carelessness, the things seen are there,—trees, buildings, bridges and canals, men and women,—and not only visible but, as it were, tangible. We can walk in imagination into these little landscapes, and not only do we breathe an infinite air but we are sure of every step. And this is the great test of mastery in such drawings. Take, for instance, the landscape drawings of Domenico Campagnola, which are also in reed-pen and sepia. These, with their broken foregrounds, upland farms among trees of delicate foliage, and distant mountain-ranges, are much more attractive to the eye at first sight than the great Dutchman’s sketches. But when in imagination we move into these pleasant landscapes, we are disconcerted by unrealities; our steps are uncertain, for they are not on solid ground. And in fact a pleasant pattern of pen-strokes remains a pattern and nothing else. But Rembrandt’s rough strokes have somehow molded all the ground with its saliences and depressions and filled the whole with light and air.

It is the same with the etchings. But there is a difference: the difference of the medium. True artist as he is, Rembrandt conceives all he does in the terms of the material used. His etchings are born as etchings and nothing else; they are not drawings transferred to copper.

There is a specific beauty of the etched line which is quite different from the beauty of a line made by the pen or chalk, or the line ploughed by a burin on copper. If it is unsuited to the sweeping rhythms of large movement in design, such as we associate with Rubens, for instance, its want of modulation and even character help a quiet dignity of draughtsmanship; and the etcher has means of enhancing homeliness of detail unrivaled in any other medium. Old buildings, wharves, boats and shipping at a river-side or quay,—such things as these naturally attract the etcher, for they are congenial to his medium. And in the Windmill (B. 233, dated 1641), Rembrandt found a perfect subject.

There is no adventitious impressiveness lent by strong effect of light and shadow in this beautiful plate: all is plain and simply rendered. But we have only to compare this etching with the etchings of some of Rembrandt’s immediate predecessors, like Jan and Esaias Van de Velde, to see the difference not only between a great and an average artist, but between a great and a commonplace etcher. The picturesque tracery of a windmill’s sails and timber-work are seen and enjoyed in the Van de Veldes’ plates, but how much more than this is in Rembrandt’s Mill! We feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the structure; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of something of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human hands and the association of man and earth. Here is a classic in its kind which many generations of etchers have found an inspiring model. An accident in the biting apparently is the cause of an aquatint-like broken tone of gray in the sky above the mill; but it comes with congruous effect, and is rather a beauty than a blemish.

In the little Amsterdam, as in nearly all these etchings, the sky is left absolutely clear and empty. And how far more truly it suggests to us the brightness of a cloudless day than the most successful of plein-air painting in vivid color, which stops the imagination instead of leaving it free and active! This little plate is filled with air and sun.

A first state of this etching belongs to my friend Mr. Gustav Mayer in London, but is absolutely unknown to all catalogues previous to that of Mr. Hind. In it there is a hare running over the fields, but it is a thought too big in scale, and Rembrandt doubtless suppressed it as a distracting incident.

The Cottage and Hay-barn (B. 225) and the Cottage and Large Tree (B. 226) seem companion plates; and though the latter is not dated, it is natural to assume for it the same date as that inscribed on the former—1641. If the Cottage and Large Tree is the finer of these two oblong plates in design, the Cottage and Hay-barn is the more brilliant as an etching. The cottage and shed which give the plate its name are in the center of the design, and the dark mass, full of tender shadows and reflections, emphasizes by contrast the play of open light on the fields stretching on either side, the river, the house nestling in a wood, beyond, and the distant towers of Amsterdam. Though all is treated in Rembrandt’s broad way, it is surprising how full, how suggestive of intimate detail the landscape is. As we look at it there comes over us the sense of sleepy, bright air and sunshine, the quiet of the fields, in which, though nothing outwardly is happening, we are conscious of the stir of natural life, of growing things, of flowers and grass and insects, and peaceful human occupations going on unobtrusively; of “all the live murmur of a summer’s day.” It is interesting, in view of Rembrandt’s treatment of topography, to note that Dr. Jan Six has shown that the master has here combined two different views in a single composition.

In the Cottage with White Palings (B. 232, dated 1642), effective use is made of the broad white planks of the fence to enforce the pattern of black and white in the design. Here again the subject is placed in the center with views on either side, though the horizon is higher than usual.

With the Three Trees (B. 212) of 1643, we come to the most famous of Rembrandt’s etched landscapes. This plate stands in the same sort of relation to the rest as the Mill to the rest of his landscape paintings. It is the grandest and most typical, most expressive of the master’s temperament. Here the composition is less accidental, and more (so to speak) architectural. The group of three trees stands up darkly on a bank of high ground at the right. At the left one looks over the level fields to the horizon and a glimmer of distant sea. A thunderstorm is passing away, with contorted clouds piled in the upper sky and trailing over the plain, and rods of violent rain slant across the corner of the scene. For once Rembrandt builds up a landscape design out of sky and earth; and the something elemental which inspires it gives the etching a pregnancy and significance which are absent from the other landscapes, in themselves, at their best, more intimately charming. There are those who object to the straight, hard lines of the rain; but I do not find them untrue, and they are of great value in the design. Then, what beauties lurk in this etching, wherever one looks into it! The return of the light after rain, than which there is nothing more beautiful in nature, gives a wet sparkle to the fields; and again we notice how the trees in their dark relief give glory to the space of luminous clearness beyond. The wagon on the top of the high bank is moving toward the light, and a painter sits by the roadside, sketching the passing of the storm. An angler fishes in a pool; lovers, hardly discerned, sit together, away from the world in a thicket’s obscurity. All the plain, so solitary at first sight, is filled with moving life. Of what particular species the three trees are, it might be difficult, as often with Rembrandt, to say with confidence; from their shape and the sturdy growth of their boughs, I suppose them to be oaks. There is no doubt, however, about the willow in the Omval (B. 209). The gnarled, seamed trunk of an old tree, with its rugged wrinkles and smooth bosses, irresistibly invites the etcher’s needle; and Rembrandt, like other etchers since, has evidently found a great enjoyment in this willow-stem, as in that other old willow to which he added, not very felicitously, a St. Jerome reading, spectacles on nose, and a perfunctory lion (B. 232, dated 1648). The Omval shows a different kind of composition; the willow at the edge of a thicket, in whose shadow two lovers are embowered, divides the plate; the right and larger part is all light and open—a river-bank on which a man moves down to the ferry, and the broad sunny stream, and houses, masts, and windmills across the water—a picturesque river-side such as Whistler and Haden loved to etch.