FfGURE 16 



Detail of Rembrandt's finished print, 

 Landscape with a hay barn and a flock of 

 sheep, showing shepherd in drypoint, 

 erased figures behind fJock, signature, 

 and date. Enlarged 5 times. (Smith- 

 sonian photo 59389.) 



with drypoint, as was the shepherd of the flock at left 

 center (figure 16). If is interesting to note that the 

 flock originally had two shepherds, evidently a man 

 and a woman, standing at the center of the road and 

 behind the flock. ^* These figures were drawn in the 

 ground and etched in the first stage of the print. 

 Rembrandt then must have decided that their pro- 

 portion was wrong for his composition. He reworked 

 the area, using a scraper or burnisher to flatten out 

 his etched lines, and covered the remaining ghosts 

 of the figures with a mesh of drypoint cross-hatching. 

 He then added the single small figure of the shepherd 

 boy entirely in drypoint. 



Houbraken, writing in 1718, talked of Rembrandt's 

 technical secrets, "which he would not let his pupils 

 ^gp "35 jp, truth, there are no secrets to this artist's 

 technique in the etching medium. But his mastery of 

 the art goes far beyond communicable secrets. 



FOOTNOTES 



' Hind 241 (A. M. Hind, A Catalogue oj Rembrandt's Etchings, 

 2 vol., rev. ed., London, 1923), Bartsch 224 (Adam Bartsch, 

 Catalogue raisonne de toutes tes estampes . . . de Rembrandt .... 

 Vienna, 1797). The particular example studied here is an 

 impression of the second state (of two) in the collection of the 

 United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 



The author wishes to express his deepest gratitude to Jacob 

 Kainen, curator of graphic arts at the Smithsonian Institution, 

 for his acute knowledge, unfailing helpfulness, and encourage- 

 ment in the preparation of this paper. 



- P. G. Hamerton, for one, calls special attention to the 

 technical importance of this print: "I recommend the student 

 to familiarize himself with the workmanship of this plate . . . ." 

 ( The Etchings of Rembrandt, London, 1894, p. 71.) 



^ The date is unquestionably difficult to read. Bartsch 

 misread it as 1636 (op. cit., p. 148). Charles Middleton 

 (Descriptive Catalogue oj the Etched Work oj Rembrandt van Ryn, 

 London, 1878, p. 299) was the first to identify the date as 1650. 

 This has been accepted by all modern authorities except George 

 Biorklund (Rembrandt' s Etchings: True and False, Stockholm, 



PAPER 61 : Rembrandt's etching technique 



1955, no. 52-A, p. 103) who reads it as 1652. This seems 

 unlikely to me, not only on the great stylistic affinity of this 

 print to Rembrandt's unquestioned works of 1650, but also 

 on the basis of my own reading of the date. The presumed 

 digit "2" is quite unlike the "2" in Hind's 257 and 263, 

 Rembrandt's only dated prints of 1652. (See figure 16.) 



' The general location of this scene, as well as many others 

 in Rembrandt's oeuvre, has been idenufied by Frits Lugt 

 (Mtt Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Berlin, 1920, pp. 136-140, revised 

 from the original Dutch, Wandelingen met Rembrandt in en om 

 Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1915; see also Lugt, "Rembrandt's 

 Amsterdam,'' Print Collector's Quarterly, April 1915, vol. 5, no. 

 2, pp. 111-169, and the attached map). 



= CoRNELis HoFSTEDE DE Groot, ed.. Die Urkunden iiber 

 Rembrandt (1575-1721), The Hague, 1906. On the lawsuit, see 

 nos. 113, 117, 118, 120-3, 130, and 165. Geertghc was taken 

 to the institution on July 4, 1650. 



6 On the financial troubles, starting in 1653, see ibid., nos. 

 140 ff. 



' The exact number is, of course, impossible to determine, 



105 



