The Three Trees

Details

REMBRANDT HARMENSZ. VAN RIJN (1606-1669)
The Three Trees
etching with engraving and drypoint, 1643, on laid paper, without watermark, a very good impression of this important landscape, printing with deep contrasts, with thread margins on three sides, trimmed on the platemark at right, a vertical printer's crease at right, a few tiny repaired tears at the upper sheet edges, otherwise in very good condition
Plate & Sheet 214 x 279 mm.

Provenance

With P. & D. Colnaghi, London (with their stock numbers C 27258 and C2256 MK in pencil verso).
Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790-1876), Paris (Lugt 119), his sale Drouot, Paris 16 April 1877 (and following days), lot 967 (Fr. 2,000).
K & Co., Paris, 4 June 1919 (£288-15-3) (to Colnaghi).
With P. & D. Colnaghi, London, with their stock number C. 3506 in pencil verso, acquired from the above.
With Knoedler & Co., New York, with their stock number K 1840 MK in pencil verso, sold in partnership with the above, 30 July 1921 (£529-18-0).
Probably Colonel Harry Stewart (1890-1961), New York & Dallas, Texas; then by descent.
Peter Pauls Stewart (1920-2018), Dallas, Texas.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

Bartsch, Hollstein 212; Hind 205; New Hollstein 214

Special Notice

These lots have been imported from outside the EU or, if the UK has withdrawn from the EU without an agreed transition deal, from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Brought to you by

Tim Schmelcher

tschmelcher@christies.com +44 20 7389 2268

Lot Essay

Few landscape prints in the history of art rival the evocative power of Rembrandt’s The Three Trees. The chiaroscuro he had first perfected in his historical paintings is used here in the largest and most ambitious of his etched landscapes, and the strong overplay of shadow demanded all of Rembrandt’s technical mastery.

Based on the countryside around Amsterdam, Rembrandt graduated distance and atmosphere with breathtaking subtlety, using etched lines of varying density. The three sturdy trees, of uncertain species, are starkly silhouetted against a clear patch of sky, and seem to echo the three crosses in Rembrandt’s other great masterpiece.

Where it differs from other landscape etchings is the vivid depiction of the elements at work. Yet the human life depicted in the print - the angler and his wife in the foreground at lower left, the workers in the fields beyond, the cartload of peasants on the dyke behind the trees, the artist resolutely ignoring the approaching storm, and most intriguingly the lovers secreted in the bushes lower right - none of them respond to the climatic drama unfolding around them.

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