Thursday, December 11, 2008

Rembrandt Landscape Drawings

Last year when I was doing landscape drawings in pen and ink, I discovered the book Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favorite Walks by Boudewijn Bakker. It's too expensive to buy, so I used interlibrary loans to borrow it for a couple weeks. The author and his colleagues traced where Rembrandt walked around Amsterdam on drawing expeditions and even where he sat down and drew. In some cases, a pupil's drawing exists, done alongside from a slightly different perspective, to compare with Rembrandt's drawing. What's interesting is that Rembrandt preferred the rundown cottages and romantic views, deliberately leaving out "contemporary" structures. Another writer, Gary Schwartz, I think, wrote that the weather was always fair when Rembrandt ventured out. His drawings seldom have any clouds. I suspect that he left them out.

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