Small Grey Landscape: a House and Trees beside a Pool

This tiny etching is the very first landscape Rembrandt created in the print medium, around 1640. In miniature, we see a house by a pond surrounded by trees and shrubs. A figure stands in the doorway of the house, illuminated from inside, another is leaning over the edge of the water, perhaps to wash or clean something. With a little dash of the needle, Rembrandt added a duck at the lower centre. It is a charming scene, but what an inconspicuous beginning in a genre the artist would excel in! Only three years later he would create a landscape print that to this day is considered a masterpiece of the genre and of printmaking: The Three Trees (lot 17, Old Masters Part I). Perhaps this little print was just an amusement for the artist, etched on a scrap of a plate, but then he discovered he had a taste for landscapes and began to explore the genre further. Rembrandt must have printed it only in small numbers, for it is very rare, and even a very ambitious collector like Otto Gerstenberg deemed this unassuming little print worth having. There's magic in every beginning.