Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) Woman bathing her feet, 1658 Etching and drypoint on Japan paper 6-1/4 x 3-1/4 inches (15.9 x 8.3 cm) (image) 6-1/2 x 3-3/8 inches (16.5 x 8.6 cm) (sheet) New Hollstein's first state (of 2) Property from an important Connecticut collection LITERATURE: Bartsch, 200; New Hollstein, 309; Hollstein, 289. In 1658 Rembrandt created several enigmatic, tonal etchings of women, presumably sketched directly from nude models. His Woman bathing her feet belongs to this group. Each possesses a highly suggestive setting with ambiguities. The woman in the present image appears at once to be sitting on a soft bed and also on a riverbank with a suggestion of cliffs and foliage in the background. The fact that Rembrandt did not show the woman’s feet suggests that he intended them to look as though they were immersed in water. Curiously, he also depicted what seems to be the backrest of a chair behind her in the half light. Rembrandt’s use of the thin and richly absorbent Japan paper for this impression of his Woman bathing her feet resulted in a gorgeous, deeply inked pull of an exceptionally meditative image. The hollows of the figure’s body are accentuated because of the way Japan paper holds the ink. For instance, the figure’s weight as it compresses the cloth-covered riverbank is conveyed by the depth of the blacks under her thighs. The heavily worked background landscape zone, notably around the figure’s head and face where darks bleed into the hollows of the skull, gives the image an intensely atmospheric quality. The envelope of darkness is relieved by the bright light on the front of the woman’s body, perhaps reflecting off the surface of the river water. The pose Rembrandt used for the figure in this etching relates closely to his composition for Bathsheba at the bath (1654), his much-beloved painting in the Louvre. HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved