o the People_ (_271_) and the _Landscape with trees,
farm-buildings, and a tower_ (_244_), one sees how Rembrandt was
constantly striving in the progress of his states towards greater
concentration of idea, effecting it in the former by the removal of an
entire group of figures, in the latter by the lopping of a cupola on the
church tower. Except for an occasional plate like the _Clement de Jonghe_
(_251_) with its open line after the manner of Van Dyck, Rembrandt kept to
the method of close painter-like shading throughout the latter part of his
life, but in his subject prints he almost entirely discarded this method
of chiaroscuro for a more luminous and mysterious shadow effected by the
surface tinting of a more broadly etched plate. The various states of the
_Entombment_ (_281_), first with the line quite open, then with some added
shading partially aided by a surface tint, exemplify the manner of his
progress. In this wonderful plate, and nearly all the subjects of his
later period, Rembrandt had attained a dignity of composition which we
find in few painters outside Venice. In spite of his thoroughly Dutch
temperament, Rembrandt had learnt much from the Italians, and in nothing
more than in space composition. A very large proportion of his early
etchings are studies of seperate figures. Only by this constant study of
pieces of life was perfected the power by which his greater conceptions
were realised with such unity of effect.

Rembrandt took longer than many a weaker artist to reach his maturity, not
that his progress was slower, but the maturity much higher, and even his
old age seemed like youth in its perennial receptivity and power of
vigorous growth. A well-known connoisseur of the time, Constantin
Huygens, writing in 1631, was more impressed by Lievens's brilliant
flights of invention than by Rembrandt's vivid power of expressing
character and emotion. But while the former and so many of his
contemporaries were content with their own facility and the convention
they had reached, Rembrandt never remitted the ardour of the great quest
which was the very blood of his life. Constantly breaking new paths, and
losing at each new turn his earlier patrons, who failed to follow the
progress of his genius, he died in comparative neglect, only to be
rediscovered by the moderns as one who still belongs to the most living
style of art.

A few etchers of the last two or three generations have taken a step
furthe