A Wooded Road

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

about 1650

J. Paul Getty Museum

A sketch depicts a wooded road with trees lining both sides, leading into the distance. The drawing is rendered in dark brown ink on a light brown background. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Around 1650 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn made a number of pen-and-ink drawings and etchings of wooded scenes. He emphasized certain elements, subordinated others, and gave each landscape both unity and a poetic effect. Here he drew the trees with quick, thin strokes of the quill pen, suggesting their forms rather than specifically describing them. To emphasize the bulk of the tree at the left, he drew it darker and scratched through the paper's brown-tinted surface to create the white highlights. About ten years earlier, Rembrandt had begun drawing many landscapes. He roamed the area around Amst