For one of his most beloved prints, Rembrandt carefully observed a pollard willow tree, rendering in great detail its texture and dimension using light and shadow. Pollarding is a form of tree pruning that was popular in Europe during the 17th century, when Rembrandt made this print. Pollarding truncates the branches, harvesting them for fences, weaving, and other uses, and strengthens the tree against storms. This depiction of a tree enables the age-old practice of quiet contemplation, not unlike a devotional portrait.
In Rembrandt’s time, images of saints in humble, small frames were made to direct Catholics in silent, personal contemplation and prayer. In post-Reformation Holland, the purpose of a print like this one would have been different for a Protestant like Rembrandt for whom artistry was as important as faith. The patron saint of librarians and students, St. Jerome translated the bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. He was known to have a temper but believed that immersive contemplation of religious texts could deepen your ability to love others and the world. Rembrandt shows Jerome fixated on his work, seated at his rickety outdoor desk. A lion, the animal that is his attribute and which usually accompanies him, peeks out from behind the tree, further enhancing the suggestion of depth.
Rembrandt depicts St. Jerome with less detail than the foregrounded tree, using mark making as a tool for creating depth. Even further behind St. Jerome is a majestic alpine waterfall, sketched in using even less detail, exhibiting the flourishing marks of the artist’s hand as well as the drypoint technique he used on the copper plate from which this print was made. For instance, drypoint marks are especially visible in the distant mountain ranges that transform Rembrandt’s landscape. Drypoint blurs break off quickly after only a few dozen impressions or so, making impressions such as this one more precious for their rarity and clarity.
There is a vivacity in the lines that describe both the foreground and background, a kind of searching, sketchbook quality that makes the image seem fresh on the page, more in context with Dali’s loosely rendered copper plate prints or the automatic works of 20th-century Dadaists as seen in André Masson’s The Fig Desséché. Rembrandt’s style earned him many fans in the art world of the 1600s, and many sought to capture this sense of vitality. Even today, illustrators, painters, and printmakers strive to learn from his strangely timeless mark making.
Author: Quinn Koeneman, MFA graduate 2025, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; IFPDA (International Fine Print Dealers Association) Curatorial Intern, 2023–24.
