| Description |
Rembrandt van Rijn seems most well-known as a painter of histories and portraits. Yet, he expressed a fervent interest in rendering landscapes. Eight authentic landscape paintings survive today. A previously biased academic tradition delayed analysis of these paintings by considering them meaningless and inferior to histories and portraits. Current changes in art historical doctrine dissolved this former bias, and a new tradition o f landscape study emerges. An analysis of visual language proves distinct within this tradition because it derives from the perspective o f an artist as well as an art historian and acknowledges Rembrandt's creative process in selecting, combining, and handling visual language. Examination of Rembrandt's visual language, including his use o f palette, brushstrokes, chiaroscuro, and motifs, reveals its connotative importance to landscape and reveals how context and tradition affect the artist's working methods. Rembrandt's palette proves meaningful. Seventeenth-century paint did not exist in a tube, and each color's availability, expense, and specific artistic capabilities and limitations affected Rembrandt's use of color. The master also responded to traditional and popular coloristic trends in order to create marketable and stylistically distinct landscapes |
