Rembrandt etchings at our place

Why the four Rembrandt etchings on my wall are probably heritage of the least collectible kind.

The playground of my father’s childhood was footsteps away from the front door of his family home on the Burgsteeg in Leiden.  It I believe it was then a derelict keep on a motte, an artificial hill. De Burcht goes back to the 11th century – possibly even before Kupe’s famous voyage to Aotearoa.  My daughter compares it to the water tanks embedded in the volcanoes of Auckland.  Uphill, certainly.  Round and unimpressive at first sight, for sure.  Nothing at all like the medieval fairytale castles upriver.  Nonetheless, de Burcht is the historical focal point of the city, once overlooking the confluence of two tributaries of the mightly river Rhine, and embedded in my father's childhood memory. It’s easily missed: there are city buildings around it that almost disguise its presence. In summer, it makes a nice hidden picnic spot.

The chief tourist attraction of my parents’ home town, Leiden, isn’t, in fact, de Burcht. As Rembrandt’s home town, the city exploits this connection. The Lakenhal, a brilliant reworking of a former textile industry building as an art museum, features works by this most notable of Dutch artists in its permanent exhibition.  There’s a Rembrandt tribute stop in the town centre with a video.  Various markers point out key locations in his early life – birthplace, early studies.  Rembrandt’s artistry marks a high point in the Dutch Golden Age. Of course the city is proud of him.

It’s his etchings, rather than his famous paintings, that have my attention today.  I have four landscapes that have come down to me.  How my parents acquired them is a bit obscure.  I think my Uncle Joop gave them to his brother, my Dad; possibly as an anniversary gift.  Mum put them into home-made frames.  That’s called ‘provenance’ – I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t stack up if they were the genuine article.  Now reframed on my wall, they remind me daily of my own provenance. 

There was an almighty storm this week, felling many trees; not here, but news from down South.  De Omval, signed Rembrandt 1645, is the first and largest of my little prints – a toppled tree.  It drew me to discovery. Goodness, identical prints are in the Rijksmuseum, in the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria. De Omval is a striking little piece; the elaborate contortions of the tree in foreground, to one side a well-dressed male figure in a hat with his back to us, looking out to a barge on the water and a simple cityscape on the far side.  He must have had a sense of humour, Rembrandt. In the smudgy scribble of undergrowth on the left, you can barely see it, it's a couple making out. It’s obscure. Maybe omval refers also to the fall from grace accompanying a little illict rumpty-do; a mighty wind must have brought this substantial tree down. What a subject for an etching!

De Omval (Falling Over)

I’m willing to bet that there are more Rembrandt etchings on the market than the artist himself ever printed during his lifetime.  I’m not an art historian or critic, but somehow I know that copperplates are the beginning of his process, and that the verb ‘to etch’ is about a scratching technique into something so solid that it still exists centuries later.  A first-edition print from the artist himself is worth a bob or ten.  Later impressions from the original plates might still be collectable.  Once the plates themselves have been altered in some way by someone other than the artist, that’s a later-stage version.  And of course we have today so many copying techniques that versions of De Omval might easily have come into my Uncle’s possession via some photographic or other process.  The experts can tell.   

 But now I find that apparently, the copperplate of this particular picture was substantially ‘defaced’ at some point in its history.  Is the version I have, then, from original strikes, or some other version?    Underneath there’s a pencilled signature: Handprinted by Rae Boer.  I look it up.

Ah.  This is “after Rembrandt” – not from the master himself, but from a talented copyist of the 1960s. Reproductions from original Rembrandt plates, they say.  Really? Maybe it's collectible.  Not valuable. 

I’m not disappointed. I have three others.  All probably from this same stable.  I love them all.  They remind me of Dad.  He was not at all ‘artistic’ or particularly interested in the arts.  But it’s the ‘Dutchness’ I love! It's not just because there's windmills: look at the delicacy of line here, the casual care in composition, the suggestion of landscape stretching behind in unfilled space. The cultured emptiness of rural Holland.

Molen, 1664

 What a hefty piece of engineering, the windmill. This one feels so iconic and familiar that I reckon there must be a set of placemats somewhere.

This next one is 1650: Landscape with a square tower. I once asked Dad what he knew about it. Nothing, he shrugged. Nice, he commented as though really only looking at it for the first time. I asked him, innocently, whether this was de Burcht. Not at all, he said, it's not round. Obvious, really.

Landscape with square tower

Rembrandt landscape with a hay barn and a flock of sheep

This last one is restlessly horizontal and mignon. Such detail in a small space. The composition feels effortless, packed into perfect proportion. Sheep, trees, barn; in the distance, three figures; in the middle ground, the flock; the fence leading your eye on a gentle rise to pat the barn on its thatching, and catch the cattle about to exit on the far right. The whole sectioned by shading and clever hatching to suggest a landscape with gentle form, light and shade.

The charming thing about these etchings is the way they turn the artist's local landscapes into noteworthy places.

Which brings me back to de Burcht on its motte. I'm going to be there next month. While I'm in the city of the crossed keys, I'll be more than a tourist with a curiosity about Rembrandt; I'll be sharing with my daughter and two of my grandchildren my father's etching on me - his special place.