During the first ten years of his life as an artist, Rembrandt showed little interest in landscape as a subject in its own right, although landscape elements can be found in dozens of works, such as biblical stories and genre scenes. But in the course of the 1630s, the Dutch master began to draw in nature, around Amsterdam. Towards the end of this decade, he also executed a few landscapes in oil, but never made them the theme of his paintings. There are only a handful in his entire career. In 1640, Rembrandt took up plein-air drawing again, as evidenced by the many surviving sheets, and it was only at this time that he devoted himself to landscapes in his etchings.
Exhibition poster
Rembrandt composed realistic landscapes, using his talent as an aquafortist and his mastery of drawing to fix in a few strokes the atmosphere of a scene, punctuated by the elements that make it up: silhouettes of trees, animals, people, buildings, waterways… Many of his landscapes seem bathed in bright light, which he boldly achieved by leaving a large part of the sheet blank. The contrast with deliberately dark passages creates this sun-drenched landscape effect. One of the few engravings for which he did not use this process is also one of his most spectacular: Le Paysage aux trois arbres, in which the threatening sky envelops the scene with a particular tension.
On the occasion of this new season of the Rembrandt cabinet, the Glénat Fund for heritage and creation presents to the public for the first time three new prints from its collection – Le Paysage aux trois arbres (1643), Vue de Diemen (1645) and La chaumière et la grange à foin (1641) – as well as nine prints by Dutch collector Jaap Mulders.