Stormy Landscape

Stormy Landscape from 1638 in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick is one of Rembrandt's extremely rare purely painted landscapes — a category of subject he explored far more extensively in his prolific printmaking practice but almost never attempted in oil. The landscape tradition in the Dutch Republic was dominated by specialists: Jan van Goyen, Salomon van Ruysdael, and slightly later Jacob van Ruisdael produced landscapes by the thousands for the Amsterdam and Haarlem open markets. Rembrandt's few painted landscapes, including this stormy scene, are distinguished by their dramatic, loaded quality — the landscape as emotional atmosphere rather than topographic record — that anticipates the Romantic landscape tradition of the following century. The storm in this example creates a turbulence in the sky and trees that transforms the Dutch countryside into an arena of natural drama, suggesting that Rembrandt brought to landscape painting the same interest in psychological intensity that characterized all his work with the human figure.

Rembrandt renders the storm with dramatic contrasts of light and shadow sweeping across the terrain, using the volatile weather to create an emotionally charged landscape of unusual power.