Jonathan Bober
Curator of Prints, Drawings, and European Paintings

From the moment of their creation, Rembrandt's etchings have been considered the highest expression of their kind. There is no aspect of human experience that they do not explore. Their interpretation of subject, their staging of action, and especially their light appear both completely original and essential. Their ability to convey individual psychology, personality, and even spiritual life, whether in grand historical context or the mirror, seems transcendent. No printmaker has experimented more meaningfully with process and materials, or simply drawn with a more sensitive hand. However famous Rembrandt's paintings, a good two-thirds of his activity must have concerned printmaking. Other painters, even other realists of Rembrandt's time—Caravaggio, Ribera, Velasquez—can stand beside him. No etcher of any period approaches him.

This exhibition celebrates the four-hundredth anniversary of Rembrandt's birth. In this first gallery the Blanton presents its holdings of his etchings. These represent the full range of his subjects and stylistic development, with the exception of his large plates. Notable is the general quality of works from his youth and again from his late maturity. A number of impressions figure among the earliest and finest in existence. The following gallery offers a selection of etchings inspired by Rembrandt. They include a choice group of works by peers and followers in seventeenth-century Holland; echoes of certain subjects and his hand in eighteenth-century France; and some extraordinary examples of the revival of original etching that began in the mid-nineteenth century with Rembrandt as its touchstone. They provide another measure of the importance and reach of Rembrandt's etchings.