Excerpt from The Complete Work of Rembrandt, Vol. 5: History, Description and Heliographic Reproduction of All the Master's Pictures, With a Study of His Life and His Art

The broad and hasty treatment of another hilly landscape, the Hill) Landscape with Swans, belonging to Madame Lacroix of Paris, led me to assign it to a later date than this Cassel picture in my Studien On closer consideration, however, we may recognise the same scene in this picture, as also in the ll/ooded river-landscape with Cows (cf. Plate though here the master has been content to make it the motive ofa hasty improvisation merely. As it has not been possible to reproduce the picture in time for this volume, the plate must be reserved for our Supplement. The Hill) Landscape with Tobias and the Angel (plate 344) in the Corporation Art Gallery at Glasgow, must be assigned to the year 1650, or a little later. It is, unhappily, much damaged, and the effect of its injuries has been to give it an unfinished appearance. The figures here claim as much attention as the landscape, which is therefore treated in a more decorative fashion, rising somewhat like the scenery of the stage over the figures by the waterside.

The largest and the most famous of Rembrandt's landscapes, and also the latest, as far as we know, is the Landscape with the [vz'ndmlll (plate 345) in Lord Lansdowne's collection at Bowood. Yet even this cannot have been painted later than about 1655, to judge by the mellow treatment and the glowing brownish tone, broken only by a few touches of red and brownish green local colour. It is by no means alarge picture it measures barely one metre square, the dimensions agreeing well with the intimate conception of the master. The motive is very simple in itself: a windmill stands on a ruined rampart above a wide meat, to which a road in the foreground leads down; 011 the further bank are high trees, which are mirrored in the water. But the refine ment of the master's method gives grandeur and richness to the picture. By making the mill rise in fanciful outline over the dark walls of the fortress against the glowing evening sky, by reflecting the golden atmosphere on the quiet surface of the water, and so giving a yet more vigorous effect and deeper Colour to the dark portion in the centre, he achieves an extraordinary effect, and produces an almost solemn impression, which few who have once seen the picture can forget.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.