?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN The Omval.
Etching and drypoint, 1645. 186x227 mm; 7 3/8x9 inches. Usticke's third state (of 4); White and Boon's second state (of 2). Partial indiscernible watermark. With thread margins or trimmed on the plate mark. A very good impression of this extremely scarce landscape etching, with strong contrasts and with burr on the foliage lower left and on the signature and date lower right.
According to Royalton-Kisch, "The area of Amsterdam still known as the Omval (the Ruin; a ruin formerly stood on the site) was in the 17th century a small spit of land at the head of a canal which entered the east bank of the River Amstel south east of the city. Like the ruins of Kostverloren Manor further south, this was an area often represented by Rembrandt and his contemporaries," (Rembrandt the Printmaker, London, 2000, page 210). A man standing with his back to the viewer on the bank at the far right and figures in the boat on the canal at the far right are readily apparent; less visible are a pair of lovers in the shadow of the gnarled tree at the left, similar to those more famously shadowed lovers in Rembrandt's The Three Trees, etching, 1643 (Bartsch 212), here the man is placing a garland on the head of his beloved.
This is among Rembrandt's earliest attempts to render additional tones in his etching through built up use of expressive drypoint; interestingly he also used pure drypoint for his signature and the date lower right. Bartsch 209; Biörklund 45-B; Hollstein (White and Boon 209).
