James Bretherton, etcher

To create this brooding landscape, Rembrandt combined etching, engraving, and drypoint, perhaps using an additional technique in the foreground. Humans, their activities, and their cities are but half-hidden details, while the raw beauty of nature takes center stage. Highly unusual for Rembrandt, this dramatic and melancholy depiction of gathering clouds and the sun’s rays breaking through them was created a year after the death of his beloved first wife.

Between 1750 and 1850, a veritable craze for Rembrandt’s works led to dozens of imitations and copies of this most coveted print. Some versions, such as Bretherton’s, were so deceptive that they escaped detection until recent times.