Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch, 1606–1669

The Angel Departing from the Family of Tobias, 1641
etching with touches of drypoint
4 1/16 x 6 1/16 in.

Minneapolis Institute of Art, The William M. Ladd Collection, Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916



Rembrandt - Self-Portrait, 1640, The National Gallery, London

"I frankly consider him to be a great virtuoso." - Guercino, 1660

COMMENTS

This enthusiastic assessment of Rembrandt’s etchings by the great Italian painter Guercino reveals the extraordinarily high regard contemporaries had for his prints. And no wonder, for in less than forty years Rembrandt had pushed the relatively new medium of etching to its expressive limits. While later printmakers tried to coax more from their etchings by altering the process, attacking the plate with new tools, and printing on unexpected surfaces, no one ever achieved greater results than those attained by Rembrandt with a simple etching needle and copper plates.

Unlike the somewhat arduous technique of engraving, etching is more spontaneous and entails drawing with a needle through resin onto a copper plate; acid, rather than physical pressure, cuts the lines into the plate. A consummate draftsman whose extant drawings number in the thousands, Rembrandt was naturally attracted to this draftsmanlike approach to printmaking. His exploration of the medium began around I625, the year of his first dated painting, and continued until 1665, four years before his death.

Rembrandt’s unsurpassed mastery of the medium is apparent in his technical innovations and stylistic advancements. The breadth of his subject matter is also remarkable. More than any other contemporary printmaker, Rembrandt captured on his small etched plates the quality of life in seventeenth-century Amsterdam.

Despite the brilliance of Rembrandt’s etched landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits, his artistic genius as a printmaker is nowhere more apparent than in his “histories” — depictions of scenes from the Bible, mythology, and ancient history. Surrounded, even nurtured, by a religious ambience that included Jews, Mennonites, and Calvinists of every faction, Rembrandt created etchings that captured as never before or since, the phenomenon of human interaction with the divine.

Rembrandt’s range of subjects is matched by the range of styles he used to produce them. His first accomplished etchings from the early 1630s contain exuberant Baroque compositions and dazzling lighting effects. By the end of the decade, however, Rembrandt’s mastery of the medium eased his dependence on this flamboyant style. In the 1640s, Rembrandt’s etched forms became simpler, and by 1650, the early curvilinear forms had yielded completely to stable, block-like structures.

While Rembrandt’s remarkable achievements in iconography and style would suffice to deem him a great printmaker, his technical innovations secure for him a place of honor. Rembrandt’s genius lies in his recognition that this printing technique responds best to the light touch of a draftsman, not the heavy hand of a professional printmaker. Using the etching needle like a paintbrush or pen, Rembrandt created lines that flowed in varying thicknesses across his plates. Their spontaneity was unrivaled. Not content with the traditional system of hatching and crosshatching, Rembrandt employed every sort of scratch, dash, and fleck to create nuances of texture and tone.

Rembrandt also experimented with the darkness of his lines. He achieved tonal variations by immersing some lines longer in the acid bath, so that they were “bitten” more deeply. The deeper the lines, the more ink they hold, and the darker they print. The same quest for tonal variation led Rembrandt to explore the effects of drypoint. Drypoint lines, which are scratched directly into the surface of the soft copper plate, hold more ink and print more darkly and richly than their etched counterparts. Rembrandt judiciously used drypoint to create the velvety black textures and impenetrable shadows he sought. Because of Rembrandt’s combination of etching and drypoint in a single plate, the number of quality sheets obtainable from each plate was limited. While an etched plate could yield about one hundred prints before unavoidable signs of wear set in, the number of first-rate sheets obtainable from a plate containing drypoint could be as few as fifteen. Thus, the finest Rembrandt prints—fresh and vibrant, with rich pools of black ink clinging to the drypoint lines—are rare. They are objects of exceptional beauty, and are often unique works of art despite being created by a reproductive process.

Using the term “unique” to refer to a print that exists in more than one example may seem inaccurate; however, when referring to Rembrandt etchings, it is often justified. Unlike most seventeenth-century etchers and engravers who handed over the task of printing their plates to professionals, Rembrandt seems to have preferred to do this job himself. While doing so, he often altered the process to create prints that, while pulled from the same plate, are not identical. Rembrandt’s choice of paper, from common European white paper to thin, absorbent, ivory-yellow or light grey paper from Japan, resulted in remarkable differences in the individual prints. Similar variations occurred when Rembrandt inked the plate with more or less ink, or wiped the plate in ways that left ink on the surface to print as a continuous tone.

Rembrandt’s insistence on capturing exactly the image he sought, evident in the care he took to vary inkings and paper, is similarly apparent by the number of individual states that exist of some of his etchings. A new state is created every time an artist alters the plate in any way. Even if only a single line or fleck is added or deleted, the resulting prints belong to a successive state of that etching. When Rembrandt deemed that a print required even one or two additional lines, he took the time to add them. In some cases, he wrestled with an image, creating by the time he was finished over half a dozen states of a single etching.

Although early compilations of Rembrandt’s etchings list about 350 Works, modern research has reduced this number to around 290. Despite this reduction, the number of authentic Rembrandt etchings remains extraordinarily high. Within these hundreds of etchings lies such breadth of technical inventiveness, stylistic finesse, and insightful narrative that succeeding generations continue to add their accolades to that offered by Guercino over three centuries ago.

- Kahren Jones Arbitman, Rembrandt Etchings, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1994, 1-3


With Tobias safely home, the debt retrieved, and Tobit's eyesight restored, Raphael's mission is complete. He finally reveals his identity as he departs in a freely sketched flurry of clouds and drapery. Endowed with spiritual perception, only Tobit—and his wife, Anna—witness his departure, which so startles Anna that she drops her cane. In the Bible, just father and son are present at the leave-taking, but Rembrandt assembled the entire household, displaying his fondness for down-to-earth domesticity. Also taking leave is Tobias's dog, said to be the only dog given a specific role in the Bible.

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/55371/the-angel-departing-from-the-family-of-tobias-rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Vincent and Theo had a shared enthusiasm for their countryman Rembrandt (1606-1669), whose prints they both collected. In fact, for Vincent’s very last birthday, Theo sent him some reproductions of etchings by Rembrandt, noting in an accompanying letter “they’re so beautiful.”

In 1885, on a trip to Amsterdam that included a visit to the newly opened Rijksmusem, Van Gogh spent a prolonged amount of time engrossed in Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride, about which he proclaimed to his companion “I would give ten years of my life if I could remain sitting here in front of this painting for two weeks with a crust of dry bread to eat.”

- Through Vincent's Eyes, 2022