Skip to main content

SAM on Paper: Rembrandt’s Etchings

Mar 27 2024–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Image: A Turbaned Soldier on Horseback, ca. 1632, Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch, 1606-1669, etching, 3 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (8.3 x 5.7 cm), Manson F. Backus Memorial Collection, 35.186. Photo: Elizabeth Mann

SAM highlights its collection of Old Master prints and drawings with a selection of etchings by the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). A towering figure in seventeenth-century Baroque art, Rembrandt’s career unfolded over a period of tremendous prosperity in the Dutch Republic, a loose confederation of provinces whose economy was driven by international trade with Asia, whose population was dominated by a powerful merchant class, and whose art market teemed with wealthy private patrons. Rembrandt’s works—at once literal, humanistic, penetrating, and dramatic—appealed to the tastes of this bourgeois public.

Rembrandt counted among his clients a number of connoisseurs who favored the graphic arts, and his oeuvre includes some three hundred prints. He was a pioneer of etching at a time when most artists practiced engraving, and his innovations in the medium are without precedent. His approach to printmaking was that of a draughtsman, for he manipulated his plates with fluid lines, intricate cross-hatchings, and the strategic application of acid to achieve subtle tonality, atmosphere, and light effects. Using his dual powers of observation and imagination, he captured the essence and immediacy of his subjects, and he created compositions that—whether portrait, genre scene, landscape, or Biblical narrative—unfold thematically on a human scale.


Image: A Turbaned Soldier on Horseback, ca. 1632, Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch, 1606-1669, etching, 3 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (8.3 x 5.7 cm), Manson F. Backus Memorial Collection, 35.186, photo: Elizabeth Mann

Related events

Nothing to see here, check back soon!

See what’s on at SAM


What’s on at Seattle Art Museum

Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder

Nov 20 2024–Jun 1 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams

Oct 17 2024–Jan 19 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Selections from the Shirley Family Calder Collection

Nov 20 2024–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Bethany Collins: At Sea

Nov 14 2024–May 4 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Jacob Lawrence: American Storyteller

Jun 28 2024–Jan 5 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Art and Commerce

Jul 27 2024–Jan 12 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Diego Cibelli: Fiori dei Miei Habiti / La Montagne Enchantée

May 31 2024–May 10 2026

Seattle Art Museum

Lessons from the Institute of Empathy

Mar 31 2018–Oct 5 2025

Seattle Art Museum

American Art: The Stories We Carry

Oct 20 2022–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Yirrkala: Art from Australia’s Top End

May 10 2024–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Impressionisms: The Global Nineteenth Century

Mar 27 2024–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Chronicles of a Global East

Oct 20 2022–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Pacific Species

Dec 22 2022–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Conscious Constructions

Apr 29 2011–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Art and Life Along the Northwest Coast

Nov 26 2014–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Deities & Demons: Supernatural In Japanese Art

Oct 20 2022–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Cosmic Beings in Mesoamerican and Andean Art

Nov 10 2018–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Porcelain Room

May 5 2007–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

John Grade: Middle Fork

Feb 10 2017–Feb 2 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Only Connect: The Art of Devotion

Apr 29 2011–ongoing

Seattle Art Museum

Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei

Mar 12–Sep 7 2025

Seattle Art Museum

Tariqa Waters: Venus is Missing

May 7 2025–Jan 5 2026

Seattle Art Museum

Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism

Oct 23 2025–Jan 18 2026

Seattle Art Museum

Samantha Yun Wall: 2024 Betty Bowen Award Winner

Opening Spring 2026

Seattle Art Museum