Farmstead with a hay barn. 

 Drawing by Rembrandt. 

 After Benesch, vol. 6, fig. 

 1458. (Smithsonian photo 

 59393, with the permission 

 of Phaidon Press, Ltd., and 

 the Royal Museum of Fine 

 Arts, Copenhagen.) 



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Farm buildings beside a road with distant farmstead. Drawing by Rembrandt. 

 {Photo courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.) 



that the drawing came first and not the etching. 

 Two other drawings '- (figures 4 and 5) delineate 

 the clump of trees, in form and placement very 

 similar to the print. A fourth " (figure 6) is a sketch 

 of a hay bam of the type shown in the print, evidently 

 quite common in the Dutch countryside, and a fifth " 

 (figure 7) foreshadows the scheme of composition 

 used in the print, principally the relationship of the 

 road and the dark central mass. All these drawings 

 are the mirror reversal of the print. 



It is very much a modern taste to admire sponta- 

 neity more than craft. \Ve must understand that 



PAPER 61 : Rembrandt's etching technique 



Rembrandt's work was anything but spontaneous in 

 execution. The existence of so many drawings prior 

 to this print certainly suggests that Rembrandt 

 collected his ideas from many sources, on the spot, but 

 did his finished work in the quiet of his studio, with 

 his notes ready at hand. He used the sketches as the 

 raw material for a work of art. Rembrandt said 

 that the only rule that should bind the artist is nature,'^ 

 but he was certainly not distracted by nature. The 

 individual genius here lies in assembling many obser- 

 vations from nature into a work which goes beyond 

 nature and yet appears fresh and natural. 



99 



