REMBRANDT'S 
 ETCHINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID KEPPEL 
 
 FREDERICK KEPPEL & CO. 
 NEW YORK 
 
Rembrandt's Mother turned to the Right 
 
REMBRANDT'S ETCHINGS 
 
 THE eminent Dutch authority Dr. Schel- 
 tema, in opening an address on the *'Life 
 and Genius of Rembrandt," at Amsterdam 
 many years ago, related the following story: 
 
 The famous Carthaginian general Hanni- 
 bal — exiled from his country — having retired 
 to the court of Antiochus the Great, at Ephe- 
 sus, was invited to hear a discourse by the 
 peripatetic philosopher Phormion. The ora- 
 tor spoke before him of the duties of a general 
 and of the various parts of the military art. 
 After the close of the discourse those who 
 were present, and had listened with much plea- 
 sure, asked the Carthaginian what he thought 
 of the philosopher. Hannibal made this brief 
 and sensible reply, "I have seen many fools 
 in the course of my life, but never so great 
 a fool as Phormion." "Assuredly Hannibal 
 was not wrong," remarks Cicero, with regard 
 to this anecdote. "What could be more fool- 
 ish or more impudent than to pretend, with- 
 out ever having seen either camp or enemy, to 
 I 
 
give lessons in the military art to Hannibal, 
 who, for so many years, disputed the empire 
 of the world with the Romans? 
 
 "I should not," said Dr. Scheltema, ''deserve 
 a more favorable judgment if I undertook to 
 give lessons in painting, or endeavored to un- 
 veil all the riches of Rembrandt's brilliant 
 genius." 
 
 Dr. Scheltema's story gives a pretty good 
 idea of the feelings of any one who under- 
 takes to write about Rembrandt. 
 
 Rembrandt Harmenz van Rijn was born at 
 Leyden, July 15, 1607. He was the son of a 
 miller who lived close to the western gate of 
 Leyden, immediately behind his mill, which 
 crowned the rampart of the town. Rembrandt 
 was the fifth of six children, but his parents 
 were fairly well-to-do and determined that 
 he should have a good education and should 
 attend the Latin School in order that, later 
 on, he should be able to enter the service of 
 the Republic. Such studies were not at all to 
 his taste, however, and it was not long before 
 his father became convinced that the boy's in- 
 clination toward art must be allowed to have 
 its way. 
 
 Rembrandt studied under Jakob van Sw^a- 
 nenburch and Pieter Lastman — neither of 
 them painters of the first rank. This, how- 
 ever, was of little importance, as Rembrandt 
 2 
 
was an artist of such wonderful originality 
 that it is only in a few of his earliest plates 
 that we can detect dependence on any prede- 
 cessor. He had scarcely started on his career 
 when he was far beyond them all, and he car- 
 ried the art of etching to heights that have 
 still to be reached by any artist since his day. 
 
 In 1630 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, 
 and in 1634 he married Saskia van Uilenburg, 
 who came of a good Friesland family. Saskia 
 lived for only eight years after her marriage 
 — she died at Amsterdam in June, 1642, leav- 
 ing Rembrandt a son named Titus, who was 
 brought up by his father in his own profes- 
 sion, but did not distinguish himself as an 
 artist. 
 
 The death of Saskia marks a turning-point 
 in Rembrandt's life, in more ways than one. 
 Up to that time he had lived in comparative 
 comfort. He had a large house in the Breed 
 Strat, and this house was filled with pictures 
 and other works of art. His paintings seemed 
 to be greatly appreciated by the public and he 
 had many pupils. He was very fond of col- 
 lecting all sorts of curious costumes and he 
 often painted or etched his own portrait in 
 picturesque garb. His etching Rembrandt 
 Leaning on a Stone Sill gives us a charming 
 picture of the Rembrandt of that time — a 
 graceful elegant figure with abundant curly 
 
 3 
 
hair, a rich velvet cloak, and a flat velvet cap 
 on the side of his head. 
 
 The etchings that belong to this early period 
 are, many of them, of exquisite delicacy and 
 beauty. The etching of Rembrandt's Mother 
 turned to the Right is one of his most beau- 
 tiful things, and reminds us that it was Rem- 
 brandt more than any other artist who taught 
 us what beauty and dignity there are in the 
 faces of old people. 
 
 The earliest period was also characterized 
 by spirited little sketches of beggars, another 
 of Rembrandt's artistic discoveries. 
 
 Throughout his career he etched plates of 
 scriptural subjects, his manner of treating 
 them varying according to the ever-changing 
 style of his many-sided genius. Most of the 
 early scriptural pieces are of small size and 
 very delicately etched. The Christ at Em- 
 maus, Bartsch No. 87, is usually included in 
 this period. It appears to be dated 1634, but 
 the style of the etching is so absolutely diifer- 
 ent from Rembrandt's first period that I can- 
 not help suspecting that what is apparently a 
 ''3" was really a "5," and that the etching be- 
 longs to his last period. To the early period 
 also belongs the exquisite little Landscape 
 with a Flock of Sheep. 
 
 After Saskia's death the tide seemed to 
 turn against Rembrandt. He was painting 
 
 4 
 
Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill 
 
Rembrandt Drawing 
 
and etching with unprecedented splendor, 
 but luck was against him and his fortunes de- 
 clined steadily. Perhaps the explanation of 
 the evil days upon which Rembrandt had 
 fallen may be looked for simply in this fact 
 — that his work was too great for the people. 
 He certainly did not lack industry, and we 
 know that he lived in a very simple manner, 
 and that often, while at work, his repast con- 
 sisted of a bit of bread and cheese or a red 
 herring. In any case it was a bad time for 
 art. Holland was exhausted by war, the 
 treasury was empty, and business was almost 
 at a standstill. These conditions were felt 
 above all in Amsterdam, where, in 1653, there 
 were over two thousand empty houses. 
 
 The print of Rembrandt Drawing shows us 
 the Rembrandt of this time, seated at an 
 open window, in sober widower's dress. It 
 is interesting and rather sad to contrast this 
 simple and serious portrait with the plate of 
 Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill, done nine 
 years earlier. 
 
 7 
 
Christ at Emmaus 
 
Portrait of Jan Six 
 
Landscape with Three Cottages 
 
 It is to the period after Saskia's death 
 that we owe the marvelous series of land- 
 scapes, which, perhaps more than anything 
 else, rank Rembrandt as the supreme master 
 of etching. It is one of the chief glories of 
 Rembrandt's landscapes, as it is also of his 
 portraits, that he completely loses himself in 
 his subject. His landscape produces on us 
 the effect, not of a cleverly etched scene where 
 one is conscious of the artist, but the effect of 
 out-of-doors itself. 
 
 It would seem that each different type of 
 natural landscape in the world has to be 
 II 
 
rediscovered artistically. In a frontier coun- 
 try the trail has first to be blazed by a 
 pioneer, and in the field of art it takes a 
 master hand to show that the landscape is 
 paintable at all. For example, the French 
 landscape is generally regarded as being very 
 beautiful and very paintable. But the rea- 
 son for this lies probably less in any pe- 
 culiarity of the landscape itself than in the 
 fact that the way to see its beauty and the 
 way to paint it were discovered by Corot, 
 RousseaUj and Daubigny. English landscape 
 seems now admirably adapted to etching, but 
 it remained for Seymour Haden to prove it 
 so. Rem.brandt discovered, once for all, the 
 beauty in the flat Holland landscape with its 
 wide sweep of sky, and his discovery is none 
 the less a stroke of genius that he usually 
 expresses the sky by leaving it a perfect blank. 
 
 Rembrandt had two styles of technique 
 which he used in his landscape plates. The 
 Landscape with a Hay barn is a splendid ex- 
 ample of the first. In this the shapes of the foli- 
 age are expressed with all sorts of little curls 
 and twists — usually in pure etching. In the 
 second the foliage is expressed with stiff little 
 strokes, and the plates done in this manner 
 are largely dry-point. As in dry-point there 
 is so much more resistance to the needle than 
 in aquafortis, this difference in technique 
 12 
 
The Mill 
 
 between the dry-point plates and the bitten 
 or etched plates is onlj^ natural. In most of 
 the plates the two manners are more or less 
 mixed. The Landscape with Three Cottages 
 is one of the finest dry-point plates and is full 
 of Rembrandt's beautiful luminous black shad- 
 ows. The Landscape with a Ruined Tower 
 and a Clear Foreground seems to be mid- 
 way between these two methods. Unlike 
 most of Rembrandt's landscapes it has a 
 wonderful stormy sky, and in the finest im- 
 pressions, which are usually printed with a 
 slight tint of ink over the whole plate, the 
 effect of a somber, gloomy day with a high 
 wind is almost magical. The Mill has al- 
 ways been considered one of Rembrandt's 
 
 15 
 
The Triumph of Mordecai 
 
 best plates. It was long believed to be the 
 mill which belonged to Rembrandt's father; 
 this, however, seems to be an error. 
 
 To illustrate the scriptural pieces of the 
 middle period we have chosen the Triumph 
 of Mordecai and The Synagogue — the latter 
 perhaps the prettiest of the small scriptural 
 plates. In the masterly etching Beggars at 
 the Door of a House Rembrandt summed up 
 what he had learned in his first period in re- 
 gard to the drawing of beggars. 
 
 Rembrandt's material fortunes, which had 
 declined steadily since the death of Saskia, 
 i6 
 
Beggars at the Door of a House 
 
grew worse and worse, and in 1656 he was 
 declared insolvent. His house in Breed Strat, 
 his furniture, his pictures, and everything else 
 that he possessed, were sold at auction. After 
 his estate was settled his son Titus received 
 as his heritage the sum equivalent to about 
 £280, and Rembrandt was left to begin life 
 anew. In spite of evil fortune, however, it 
 was of this period that Seymour Haden — 
 with his usual vehemence of expression — said: 
 "In the later part of his life he painted almost 
 like a god !" 
 
 There is much obscurity as to his doings in 
 these latter years. It is believed by some that 
 he married his former servant Hendrickie 
 Jaghers. It is known that she took care of 
 him for many years when he was poor and in 
 disrepute, and some of the most beautiful 
 paintings that Rembrandt has left us are por- 
 traits of Hendrickie. 
 
 19 
 
Portrait of Abraham Franz 
 
 In etching, portraits characterize Rem- 
 brandt's last period. The marvelous plate of 
 Sylvius was done in 1646, and so belongs to 
 his middle period, but except for that almost 
 all his greatest portraits, with the exception 
 of portraits of himself or of members of 
 his family, w^ere done after the year 1650. 
 And this is no matter for regret, for Rem- 
 brandt had spent a long life in studying men, 
 and at the end he was able to depict them 
 as no one else has ever been able to do. 
 To illustrate the portraits we have chosen 
 the beautiful, quiet, contemplative figure of 
 Clement de Jonghe, the charming figure of 
 20 
 
Portrait of Clement de Jonghe 
 
An Old Man with a Divided Fur Cap 
 
Portrait of Jan Sylvius 
 
Portrait of Lieven van Coppen 
 
Christ Preaching 
 
 Jan Six, and the portraits of Abraham Frajiz 
 and the writing-master CoppenoL 
 
 Among the scriptural pieces one is almost 
 surprised to find that the beautiful, carefully 
 wrought plate of Christ Preaching was as- 
 signed by Rovinski to the year 1652 — if this 
 assumption is correct the plate shows a curi- 
 ous return to his earlier manner. In general, 
 the scriptural pieces of the last period are 
 done with the utmost freedom. The Three 
 Crosses and St. Francis are splendid examples 
 of this manner. The noble plate of St. Jerome 
 
 25 
 
in an Italian Landscape belongs to this time, 
 and also the upright plate in Rembrandt's 
 dark manner, The Presentation. 
 
 The great master died at Amsterdam in 
 1669. 
 
 The Presentation 
 
< 
 
St. Jerome in an Italian LANDSCAPt, 
 
HROUGHOUT Rembrandt's life his 
 
 1 etching went hand in hand with his 
 painting. His etchings are just as true an ex- 
 pression of the man as his paintings, perhaps 
 truer, being more intimate. 
 
 "With the exception of the coloring," to 
 quote Bartsch, ''all that we have said of the 
 beauties and imperfections of Rembrandt's 
 paintings applies equally well to his etchings. 
 They are in the same manner admirable and 
 defective ; but their beauty strikes us so forci- 
 bly that we scarcely heed their defects. A 
 vagabond liberty, a picturesque disorder, an 
 easy touch, the rarest perception of chiaros- 
 curo, and the talent of expressing the charac- 
 ter and the different ages of the subjects he 
 was treating by touches thrown in as it were 
 by chance ; such are some of the elements, and 
 there are many more which constitute the 
 merit of Rembrandt as an etcher, which give 
 such an inexpressible charm to his prints." 
 
It was long believed that the wonderful 
 quality which Rembrandt obtained in his etch- 
 ings was due to some mysterious methods, the 
 secret of which had perished with him. Bartsch 
 was the first to question this. He became 
 convinced that the only real secret of Rem- 
 brandt's etching lay in his genius and that his 
 processes could all be explained. 
 
 Except in portraits Rembrandt scarcely 
 ever chalked the outline of his designs. He 
 drew them at once on the plate with the same 
 freedom that one meets in his rough pen-and- 
 ink sketches. This manner of projecting his 
 subject on the plate is best shown in the Man 
 Draiving from a Model. In other hands this 
 method would perhaps not have been the best 
 way to produce a correct design, but it was a 
 very sure means of preserving all the fire of 
 the first conception. 
 
 The execution of Rembrandt's plates is 
 sometimes rough and sometimes finished, but 
 the lines cross each other in such different di- 
 rections that it is impossible to follow them 
 as we can do in most of the prints of other 
 etchers. Those velvety intense blacks which 
 characterize Rembrandt's prints were a neces- 
 sity to him on account of his love for vivid 
 effects of lighting, sharp contrasts of brilliant 
 light and deep shadows, night pieces with 
 torchlight and the like. 
 
 30 
 
Man Drawing 
 
 FROM 
 
 Model 
 
The first "biting" of the plate gave him all 
 the more delicate lines and so far he seems to 
 have bitten the plate in the usual manner. 
 
 But then, instead of going over all the more 
 delicate parts of the plate with "stopping-out 
 varnish," Rembrandt seems to have taken off 
 the old varnish, regrounded the plate v^^ith 
 transparent varnish, and added new series of 
 hatchings to his shadows in a different direc- 
 tion from the first series of strokes. 
 
 For giving depth and warmth to the plate 
 he usually worked it up with dry-point, in the 
 use of which he was a consummate master. 
 He combined the two in such a manner that 
 it is extremely difficult to tell where the bitten 
 work stops and the dry-point begins. 
 
 The burin was another instrument which 
 Rembrandt used with the same success as the 
 dry-point, although less frequently. He gen- 
 erally employed it when he desired to produce 
 an intensity which could not be obtained by 
 means of aquafortis and dry-point. He knew 
 all the resources of aquafortis, but he realized 
 that by its use alone it was impossible to pro- 
 duce narrow hatchings composed of strokes 
 both fine and deep at the same time. He 
 therefore renounced aquafortis when he 
 wished to produce a fine velvety and vigorous 
 appearance, persuaded that the burin alone 
 could give him this. These shadings of burin 
 
 33 
 
work were then worked over with dry-point 
 so as to give them a beautiful velvety surface 
 and to combine the burin work with the bitten 
 work. This explains why the most vigorous 
 proof of the copy done in aquafortis by Basan 
 of the Burgomaster Six appears crude, cold, 
 and gray in comparison with the original print. 
 
 Whatever fashions have influenced the 
 world of art during the present generation, 
 they have not affected Rembrandt. His fame 
 has grown steadily and surely with the growth 
 of artistic education. So that to-day, if the 
 vote of all the painters and etchers now living 
 were taken it is probable that Rembrandt 
 would be adjudged, by his influence as well 
 as by his work, the greatest artist the world 
 has known. 
 
 David Keppel. 
 
 December, 1910. 
 
 34 
 
Woman Preparing to Dress after Bathing