Rembrandt

===Graphic works===
[[File:Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn - Christ with the Sick around Him, Receiving Little Children (The 'Hundred Guilder Print') - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=1|The ''[[Hundred Guilder Print]]'' (c. 1647–49), an etching now housed in the [[National Museum of Western Art]] in Tokyo]]
[[File:Die landschaft mit den drei baeumen.jpg|thumb|upright=1|''The Three Trees'' (1643)]]
[[File:B159 Rembrandt.jpg|thumb|The Shell (a [[cone snail]]) is the only known still life Rembrandt ever etched.]]

Rembrandt produced [[etching]]s for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and practically abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work.<ref>Schwartz, 1994, pp. 8–12</ref> He took easily to etching and, though he learned to use a [[Burin (engraving)|burin]] and partly [[engraving|engraved]] many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.<ref>White 1969, pp. 5–6</ref> He worked on the so-called ''[[Hundred Guilder Print]]'' in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.<ref>White 1969, p. 6</ref>
Although the print only survives in two [[state (printmaking)|states]], the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.<ref>White 1969, pp. 6, 9–10</ref>

In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now used [[hatching]] to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including [[Japanese paper]], which he used frequently, and on [[vellum]]. He began to use "[[surface tone]]," leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use of [[drypoint]], exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.<ref>White, 1969 pp. 6–7</ref>

His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the 27 self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. The landscapes, mostly small, largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. Of the many hundreds of drawings Rembrandt made, only about two hundred have a landscape motif as their subject, and of the approximately three hundred etchings, about thirty show a landscape. As for his painted landscapes, one does not even get beyond eight works.<ref>

Christiaan Vogelaar &  Gregor J.M. Weber (2006) Rembrandts Landschappen</ref> One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings.<ref>See Schwartz, 1994, where the works are divided by subject, following [[Adam Bartsch|Bartsch]].</ref> He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as [[Andrea Mantegna|Mantegna]], [[Raphael]], [[Hercules Seghers]], and [[Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione]].

Drawings by Rembrandt and [[list of Rembrandt pupils|his pupils/followers]] have been extensively studied by many artists and scholars{{efn|Such as [[Otto Benesch]],<ref>Benesch, Otto: ''The Drawings of Rembrandt: First Complete Edition in Six Volumes''. (London: Phaidon, 1954–57)</ref><ref>Benesch, Otto: ''Rembrandt as a [[Drawing|Draughtsman]]: An Essay with 115 Illustrations''. (London: Phaidon Press, 1960)</ref><ref>Benesch, Otto: ''The [[List of drawings by Rembrandt|Drawings of Rembrandt]]. A Critical and Chronological Catalogue'' [2nd ed., 6 vols.]. (London: Phaidon, 1973)</ref> [[David Hockney]],<ref name="Hockney2014" /> [[Nigel Konstam]], [[Jakob Rosenberg (art historian)|Jakob Rosenberg]], [[Gary Schwartz (art historian)|Gary Schwartz]], and [[Seymour Slive]].<ref>Slive, Seymour: ''The Drawings of Rembrandt: A New Study''. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009)</ref><ref>Silve, Seymour: ''The Drawings of Rembrandt''. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019)</ref>}} through the centuries. His original draughtsmanship has been described as an individualistic art style that was very similar to East Asian old masters, most notably Chinese masters:<ref name="Mendelowitz">Mendelowitz, Daniel Marcus: ''Drawing''. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1967), p. 305. As Mendelowitz (1967) noted: "Probably no one has combined to as great a degree as Rembrandt a disciplined exposition of what his eye saw and a love of line as a beautiful thing in itself. His "Winter Landscape" displays the virtuosity of performance of an Oriental master, yet unlike the Oriental calligraphy, it is not based on an established convention of brush performance. It is as personal as handwriting."</ref> a "combination of formal clarity and [[calligraphy|calligraphic]] vitality in the movement of pen or brush that is closer to [[Chinese painting]] in technique and feeling than to anything in European art before the twentieth century".<ref name="Sullivan">Sullivan, Michael: ''The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art''. (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), p. 91</ref>