The Omval

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This landscape represents a familiar spot outside Amsterdam that Rembrandt recorded in several drawings. It is a peninsula, known then and now as "De Omval," after a ruin that had once stood there (the Dutch word omvallen means to fall down). On the far bank of the Amstel River sit houses and a mill near the Watergraafsmeer neighborhood’s ring dike, whose waters flow into the river. The distant structures are clearly composed with confident etched lines. In contrast, the large willow tree that dominates the scene and conceals a pair of lovers in its blurred, almost textural shadows dramatically demonstrates the effect of combining etching and drypoint.

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