View of Amsterdam from the Kadijk.

During his lifetime, Rembrandt's extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands. This continued for several centuries; the only difference today is that the cult of Rembrandt has never been stronger and the market demand for choice or scarce impressions has never been higher.

Because his father was a miller, Rembrandt must have enjoyed adding the windmill to <em>View of Amsterdam</em>, his first landscape print. The early 1640s marked a flurry of landscape activity for him in and around his adopted city. Several etchings reflect the area near the new house that he and his wife Saskia bought in 1639. Then, after her death in 1642, he may have consoled himself by walking the countryside, with its picturesque old farmhouses. Scholars even speculate that, because Rembrandt ceased making self-portraits in etching around this time, he may have found in nature the sort of meditative self-reflection that he had previously found in self-portraiture.

The etching depicts a recognisable view (but in reverse) of the North East of the 'St. Anthonis Poort, outside the old bastion de Blauwhoofd'. Buildings include the Haringpakkerstoren, the Oudekerk, the Montalbaanstoren, the East and West Indian Dockhouses, the Mill on the Blauwhoofd and the Zuiderkerk. Rembrandt had sketched the local landscapes but his etchings of the subject matter were a new departure between about 1640 and 1652. Differences in technique among his landscape etchings and drypoints suggest that, just as he sketched in situ, he may have sometimes sketched directly onto his copper plates in drypoint or with an etching needle.

This impression is the only state of the etching. It is without the vertical scratches (in the sky, especially on the right-hand side) described in New Hollstein Rembrandt catalogue for early impressions. Te Papa also owns a copy of the same print by William Otley, 1828 (1910-0001-1/17-80).

References: New Hollstein Dutch 203, only state; Hollstein Dutch 210, only state

See:

Minneapolis Institute of Art, https://collections.artsmia.org/art/42257/view-of-amsterdam-rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn

V&A, Search the collections, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O517091/a-view-of-amsterdam-from-print-rembrandt-harmensz-van/

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   September 2017