ABOUT

This website is dedicated to the graphical works by Rembrandt van Rhijn (Leyden 1606-1669 Amsterdam). It contains three interrelated elements. The core part is Catalogue #21, which contains elaborate descriptions and information about all etchings made by Rembrandt.. The second part provides information about the private collection ‘Rembrandt in Black and White’, which contains 220 impressions of Rembrandt’s works and 90 graphical works by other artists, all related to Rembrandt’s oeuvre. Finally, there is a webshop where a small number of original impressions are offered for sale.

Rembrandt is primarily known for his paintings. More than 400 of these are now spread around the world. Almost all of these paintings can be seen by the public, since they are part of museum collections. Only a small number of paintings are in private collections. It is estimated that Rembrandt spent as much time painting as he did with producing the etchings. The latter required not only the process of producing a copperplate with the picture, but then also the process of making the impressions. Rembrandt did most of the printing himself, in later years experimenting with various types of paper.

Besides paintings and etchings, Rembrandt made a large number of drawings. Most of these were preparatory works,  for both paintings and etchings. They are often unfinished and not signed by the master.

Since the first catalogue of his etching was published by Edmé-François Gersaint in Paris in 1751, nineteen more versions followed, by authors with various nationalities. Some authors used their own numbering, but most followed the numbers and 12 categories introduced by Adam von Bartsch in 1803.

Over the years many prints originally attributed to Rembrandt lost that status, some of those were ‘restored’ later. The most recent catalogue, the New Hollstein, is compiled by Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers in 2013, based on extensive research of more than 12.000 impressions in over 100 museum collections. It not only introduced a new, chronological numbering, called NHD. It also concluded that 290 etchings are made by Rembrandt himself and 24 more are made by him with the assistance of others.

A typical characteristic of etchings is the existence of ‘states’. When a plate is changed after the first impressions were made, it logically leads to different impressions. The difference may be just a simple stroke or line, but may also be a more or less complete overhaul of the picture. Either as corrections or as improvements. Some of the prints may have only one state, like most of the landscapes, but for others more than ten states are known.

Ca 100 plates survived Rembrandt and were used by their new owners to make posthumous impressions. 80 of these plates were assembled by Francois Basan around 1795 and used to produce a large number of albums, containing all 80 prints. The last of these ‘Recueils’ was published in 1906. Many of these impressions are also new states, if only to remedy the wear of printing so many copies.

Consequently, impressions are identified with their Bartsch (B) and/or New Hollstein (NHD) numbers, the state and the number of states known. Example: The Hundred Guilder Print can be identified as B 74 (2/II) or NHD 239 (3/IV).  

This private collection contains 220 original etchings by Rembrandt en ca 90 related works of art. Like copies by other artists or works by predecessors that inspired Rembrandt. The collection has been shown in many museums, in the Netherlands, but also in Belgium, Berlin, Geneva and South Korea. All prints shown on this website are copies of the impressions in the collection.