Two Cottages
Rembrandt is rightfully considered the outstanding Dutch artist of the seventeenth century. He was a masterful painter, draftsman, and etcher who keenly observed his surroundings and summarized his vision with the seeming effortless handling of the brush, pen, and stylus.
This energetic drawing deftly combines the summary and the specific. The apparent sketchiness of the second cottage and trees is as deliberately sought as the elaborately detailed first cottage, its figures, and the carriage lacking a wheel. Rembrandt appears to have used white gouache in areas where he found his pen and ink definition unacceptable. The drawing has been grouped with a number of sketches Rembrandt made in the outskirts of Amsterdam in the early 1640s, when he also produced several comparable landscape etchings.
This energetic drawing deftly combines the summary and the specific. The apparent sketchiness of the second cottage and trees is as deliberately sought as the elaborately detailed first cottage, its figures, and the carriage lacking a wheel. Rembrandt appears to have used white gouache in areas where he found his pen and ink definition unacceptable. The drawing has been grouped with a number of sketches Rembrandt made in the outskirts of Amsterdam in the early 1640s, when he also produced several comparable landscape etchings.
Artwork Details
- Title: Two Cottages
- Artist: Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam)
- Date: ca. 1636
- Medium: Pen and brown ink (gallnut ink, possibly only partially), corrected with white chalk and/or body color.
- Dimensions: 5 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. (15 x 19.1 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
- Object Number: 1975.1.801
- Curatorial Department: The Robert Lehman Collection
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