The Windmill is a celebrated etching created by the master printmaker Rembrandt van Rijn in 1641. This particular piece, executed on laid paper, exemplifies the artist’s prolific output within the medium of prints. Dating from the period 1601 to 1650, this work anchors itself firmly within the Golden Age of Dutch art, a time when detailed landscape subjects and genre scenes were highly valued, reflecting the burgeoning middle class’s desire for depictions of their local environment. Rijn, already established as a leading painter and draftsman in Amsterdam, frequently turned to etching to capture detailed scenes of local topography, allowing for wider distribution of his imagery than his larger oil paintings.
As a work of graphic art, Rijn’s technical skill is evident in the intricate manipulation of the etching needle and the resultant fine, yet varied, lines. The subject, a traditional post mill, dominates the composition, often interpreted as the mill on the walls of Amsterdam (Rijn’s own father had ties to milling). The artist expertly uses contrasts of light and shadow, relying on dense cross-hatching to define the darker areas of the mill structure and the foreground landscape. Unlike the demands of complex narrative scenes, these intimate landscape studies allowed the artist to experiment freely with atmosphere and perspective, using the line itself as the primary tool for modeling form and texture.
This important example of Rijn’s graphic work is classified as a Print and reflects the cultural environment of its creation in the mid-17th century. The piece resides in the distinguished collection of the National Gallery of Art, where it contributes to the museum’s extensive holdings of European art from the period 1601 to 1650. Because the etching is several centuries old, high-resolution reproductions of this iconic image are frequently available for study and enjoyment, often entering the public domain for educational access, allowing scholars worldwide to study the finesse and innovation demonstrated by Rijn’s etching technique.
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