Rembrandt van Rijn

Windmills, steeples, and ship masts bristle along a flat low horizon. Tiny human figures dot the middle ground, while the foreground is taken up by turf and canals. The artist’s graphic marks occupy about a third of this sheet, which is otherwise left conspicuously-almost gapingly-blank. Working rapidly on a small scale, Rembrandt depicts a recognizable view of Amsterdam as seen from the surrounding countryside. The sketchy treatment and economical mark-making in Rembrandt’s landscapes have been widely admired by later artists.

Although we know that Rembrandt’s vast print collection gave him ample opportunity to study prints by other artists including Callot, his approach to landscape etching owes little to the French master. In this delicate, distant view of his home city of Amsterdam, Rembrandt contained the entire vista in the lower third of the composition, while leaving a slight film of plate tone on the upper portion to intimate a changing sky. A clump of turf in the foreground leads our eye back through a few watery trails, but Rembrandt’s recession into space is not as measured as that of Callot, nor as stridently symmetrical. The scene is literal, recording recognizable places such as the Old Church and the warehouses of the Dutch East India Company. Rembrandt’s quickly-sketched, calligraphic lines accentuate an overall impression of informality and immediacy.