LONDON.- Ever the great innovator, Rembrandt had a distinctly tactile approach to printmaking. Four landscapes which retain the presence of Rembrandt’s hand on the printing plate, from lusciously inked tree-hollows to expansive, lightly misted skies, will be offered at Sotheby’s in London on 29 September 2015, in the company’s biannual Prints & Multiples sale. From the collection of Bernard Palitz, the distinguished provenances of these enduring records of the Dutch countryside include other notable scholar-collectors who were custodians of the prints before they were acquired by Mr. Palitz, for whom provenance always shared equal weight with quality.

A keen collector and patron of the arts, Bernard Palitz began collecting in the 1950s, focussing on prints by Rembrandt and Dürer. Mr. Palitz had grown up in a New York City home filled with important German, Flemish and Dutch paintings assembled by his father, Clarence Y. Palitz. In this environment, he acquired a sophisticated eye trained on the highest quality, which he later combined with a meticulous and studious approach to acquiring works.

Six’s Bridge
The rare etching and drypoint, 1645
Estimate: £80,000-120,000 (€114,000-171,000)
“The swift and spare strokes of the etching have all the freedom of a sketch from life”

A delightful, if apocryphal, anecdote attests to the spontaneous quality of this etching. Rembrandt and Jan Six, his friend and patron, sit down to lunch in the countryside. Six’s servant is dispatched to the village to bring back a forgotten pot of mustard. Rembrandt bet his friend that he can complete an etching – sketched on the copper plate – before the servant returns. Six’s Bridge is purportedly the result of Rembrandt’s successful wager.

Landscape with Three Gables Cottages beside a Road
Etching and drypoint, 1650. Estimate: £80,000-120,000 (€114,000-171,000)
A view down a road lined with cottages is a theme which preoccupied Rembrandt from his earliest landscapes. The velvety drypoint technique used by the artist makes visual the sense of a breeze rustling in the trees, and the sharp diagonal perspective pulls the view down the country land.

Landscape with a Square Tower
Etching and drypoint, 1650
Estimate: £35,000-55,000 (€49,900-78,500)
Rembrandt’s Dutch landscapes are a celebration of the everyday, yet with this subject the artist injects the purely Dutch motif with a romantic mood. The imaginary tower of heroic proportions provides an element of this history alongside the ordinary. The effects of light and atmosphere are skilfully conveyed in the sky, which seems to show a heavy, misting rain, an effect produced by Rembrandt’s vertical wiping of the inked plate.

Clump of Trees with a Vista
Drypoint, 1652
Estimate: £70,000-100,000 (€100,000-143,000)