Rembrandt Art Prints

He was born in Leiden on 15 July 1606, the son of a miller, and left Leiden University for painting. Six months with the history painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam mattered more than any schooling, and by 1625 he shared a Leiden studio with his friend Jan Lievens. At the end of 1631 he moved to Amsterdam, made his name as a portraitist and in 1634 married Saskia van Uylenburgh.

The good years were short. Three of the couple's children died within weeks of birth, Saskia died in 1642, and the mortgage on a grand house in the Breestraat helped push him to declare insolvency in 1656. His collection went to auction, from drawings by Raphael and Mantegna to two lion skins. He outlived both his companion Hendrickje Stoffels and his son Titus, and died in Amsterdam in October 1669.

In his portraits, watch the nose: the light nearly always breaks along its ridge, leaving one side of the face in shadow. The Night Watch is not a night scene at all; its darkness comes from age, and it shows a militia ceremony rather than a patrol. In The Return of the Prodigal Son, one of his last paintings, look at the father's hands: the left, on his son's shoulder, is broader and more masculine, the right softer, as if one parent were both mother and father.

Rembrandt etched from 1626 until 1660, and in his mature prints he often left a thin film of ink on the plate instead of wiping it clean, so each impression carries a soft tone. The Met records its Abraham and Isaac (1645) as an etching with plate tone, and its portrait of Jan Six (1647), a friend who lent him money, as etching, drypoint and burin. One honest caveat: The Mill, a glowing evening landscape in Washington, was long doubted as his and is still not universally accepted.