. Rembrandt : his life, his work, and his time. f this plate, the master suggests,with incomparable knowledge and precision, the various planes of awide champaign, the plantations of a great estate, a mansion surroundedby a wood, with its outbuildings and dependencies, the adjacentvillages, and, beyond, the broad line of ocean, stretching away tothe horizon. With a few careless strokes of the point, he definesthe site, and the salient features of his landscape. He then elaboratesits details, bringing out the characteristic growth of the various trees,and finally gives colour and completeness t
. Rembrandt : his life, his work, and his time. f this plate, the master suggests,with incomparable knowledge and precision, the various planes of awide champaign, the plantations of a great estate, a mansion surroundedby a wood, with its outbuildings and dependencies, the adjacentvillages, and, beyond, the broad line of ocean, stretching away tothe horizon. With a few careless strokes of the point, he definesthe site, and the salient features of his landscape. He then elaboratesits details, bringing out the characteristic growth of the various trees,and finally gives colour and completeness to the whole by a fewemphatic touches, applied with unerring science. Even in theseswift and summary renderings of nature, improvisations rather thanstudies, we are struck by the intimate harmony between the methodof expression and the desired effect. A mind so entirely absorbed ^ Called 7nore properly by Monsieur Charles Blanc, ^ Fay sage a la Tour—there beingindeed little indicatio7i of ??ruin in the first state, with the dome.—F. Il I li , D STUDIES OF ANIMALS 287 in art and its various developments was naturally attracted toexperimental processes. Evidences of such attraction are to befound in a plate of several sketches (B. 364), where Rembrandtseems to have tried the effect of a broad point to produce rich,intense blacks, in contrast to the white tone of the paper. Theauthenticity of this plate has been questioned. We believe it, however,to be the work of the master. The impression in the British Museumhas strong presumptive evidence in its favour, for it originally formedpart of Houbrakens collection. But we rely more confidently on itsanalogies with plates such as the Village near the High-road (B. 217)and the Landscape liitk a Vista, dated 1652 (B. 222), in which thetreatment of masses of foliage is almost identical. An etching dated1650, the Shell (B. 159), is yet another instance of RemJDrandtsscrupulous observation, and fidelity to Nature. It is interes
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1903
