Cottage among Trees

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Among Rembrandt's sketches of rustic farmhouses and cottages, this drawing is unusually finished in execution and formal in composition. Rembrandt drew the scene with fine pen lines of fairly even width. He applied wash sparingly and rendered the texture of the thatch roof with heavily inked strokes reminiscent of a drypoint burr. In so doing, he created a work related in feeling to his etchings. Rembrandt situated the cottage parallel to the picture plane and framed it symmetrically by adding at the right of the original sheet a strip of paper, on which he extended the tree branches, the fences, and the distant horizon. In its reinterpretation of Italian Renaissance principles of composition, this drawing reveals parallels with paintings Rembrandt made in the years 1648–50, most notably the Supper at Emmaus of 1648 (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art