Rembrandt's metaphysical wit: The Three Trees and The Omval

Abstract

Rembrandt's etching The Three Trees of 1643 has a fair claim to being the single most celebrated and familiar landscape in Dutch art. Most of the attention it has received has dwelt on its sheer power and richness as an image, which are unparalleled in the master's graphic work in the genre. But The Three Trees also marks a critical nexus in Rembrandt's art between the languages of painting and printmaking, which in landscape at least entails a further distinction between 'poetic' and realistic modes of representation. As a subject in its own right, landscape had not drawn his interest until the second half of the 1630s, and it was only in 1640 that he began making landscape etchings. Unlike his painted landscapes, which began earlier and are mainly rather fanciful and romantic, the prints focus on the prosaic realities or the countryside around Amsterdam. Moreover, these etched landscapes belong to a broader trend toward 'prose realism' in Rembrandt's art during the 1640s, as baroque torsion and dynamism give way to quieter formal Structures, where the unities are generally less fluid, more complex, and carry a more direct sense of encounter with everyday reality.