rembrandt van rijn: Printmaker
Rembrandt
Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), widely considered to be one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art, was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606. Early in his life, Rembrandt achieved success as a portrait artist, and he produced many portraits of himself and his commissioners. In fact, he achieved tremendous popularity in his lifetime and taught many important Dutch painters. During the height of his career, he purchased his own printing press, which he used to explore and refine his engraving and etching techniques. It is likely that he printed some of his early works himself, enabling him to study methods of ink application and printing as well. Financial trouble struck in the 1650s, though, and in 1656 he
was forced to declare bankruptcy, which led to the auctioning off of his
estate, including his personal printing press. Although
Rembrandt still received a number of important portrait commissions during the
late 1650s and early 1660s, the public was less interested in the highly personal style that he had developed, and, after selling his printing press, he nearly abandoned printmaking. Although
Rembrandt remained famous as an artist, his family was plagued with tragedies, and his financial situation never markedly improved. When Rembrandt died on
October 4, 1669, he was buried in a rented grave, which has long since
disappeared, in the Westerkerk, Amsterdam.¹
etching, engraving, and printingPrintmaking is
the process of making artworks by printing, normally
on paper. Prints are created by transferring ink from a prepared medium,
often a metal plate, to a substrate, chiefly paper. A family of techniques
within printmaking, referred to as intaglio, consist of filling depressions in
the printing plate with ink and transferring the ink onto paper with an applied
pressure. These depressions required for intaglio can be made through several
methods, including drypoint, etching, and engraving. Drypoint utilizes a
needle-like drawing instrument to cut thin lines into the printing plate.
Engraving is quite similar to drypoint, although a different instrument, a
burin, is used to carve out material in preparation for the intaglio process.
Finally, etching takes these processes a step further, as the artist first
covers a metal plate with wax, then carves out a design in the wax surface,
exposing the metal, and finally submerses the plate in an acid bath, which
dissolves away the exposed areas of metal. This technique can yield much softer
textures, as the dissolution process is gradual, unlike the strong lines cut by
a burin. Rembrandt utilized all three of these intaglio techniques in his
printmaking (sometimes even within the same print). While his early style was
based on line drawing, his later style was more closely based upon painting,
with fields of lines and several acid bitings to
produce gradation and vary the strength of line. Rembrandt often
reworked his etchings on the original plates, giving rise to the states in this
exhibition.²
states
Printmaking
is unusual in that it allows the artist to revisit past works and make
alterations before producing more prints. Each set of works produced from the
same plate (without alterations) is referred to as a state. States are usually numbered using Roman numerals (e.g. i/iv) to indicate the state of the work and total number of known states. While sometimes,
new states are produced to improve upon a work, other times a state could be a
transition from one scene to another, where the artist has made sufficient
changes to lighting or composition to suggest a new time or setting.³ In either
case, viewing several states of the same work reveals something about the
creative process and enables a rare glimpse into the working mind of the
artist. Rembrandt produced multiple states for many of his prints across a
range of subjects. Some early Rembrandt states are clearly working proofs, with large swaths left unfinished, while it is unclear with some later states how finished they were considered to be. In state i/iii of Christ at Emmaus: the Larger Plate (1654), shown at right, it is clear that several figures (including Christ) are only roughly hewn, and in later states these figures are given more detail and nuance.
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REFERENCES (Further Reading)
1.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Rembrandt van Rijn,” NGA Online Editions,
http://purl.org/nga/collection/constituent/1822 (accessed May 18, 2014).
2. Wendy Thompson. "The Printed Image in the West: History and Techniques". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prnt/hd_prnt.htm (accessed May 18, 2014).
3. Antony Griffiths. 1996. Prints and printmaking: an introduction to the history and techniques. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2. Wendy Thompson. "The Printed Image in the West: History and Techniques". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prnt/hd_prnt.htm (accessed May 18, 2014).
3. Antony Griffiths. 1996. Prints and printmaking: an introduction to the history and techniques. Berkeley: University of California Press.