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Lot Essay
The present sheet is a very rare counterproof of Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with his wife Saskia. (For a regular impression of the plate in the same state, see the previous lot.) Hinterding and Rutgers record only one other counterproof, also of the second state, in New Hollstein (Albertina, Vienna, inv. no. DG1930/357).
A counterproof is created by placing a freshly printed impression, with the ink still wet, onto a blank sheet of paper and putting it through the press once more. The image is thereby transferred to the second sheet, but in reverse. Through the double-transfer – from plate to print to counterproof – the image of the counterproof is showing in the same direction as on the plate. This reversal allows the artist to explore and test some changes they might want to make to the plate by drawing onto the counterproof, before recommencing their work on the plate itself. Some counterproofs by Rembrandt show additions in pen and ink or chalk by his hand and were presumably created as trial proofs for just this purpose (see lot 163).
However, most of Rembrandt’s counterproofs do not have any additional work, and the surprising number of surviving counterproofs of some subjects in Rembrandt's oeuvre suggest that they were also produced as finished works in their own right, to satisfy a discerning collector’s market hungry for such variants and oddities. The present sheet probably belongs to this second category, rather than being an intermediate trial proof.
A counterproof is created by placing a freshly printed impression, with the ink still wet, onto a blank sheet of paper and putting it through the press once more. The image is thereby transferred to the second sheet, but in reverse. Through the double-transfer – from plate to print to counterproof – the image of the counterproof is showing in the same direction as on the plate. This reversal allows the artist to explore and test some changes they might want to make to the plate by drawing onto the counterproof, before recommencing their work on the plate itself. Some counterproofs by Rembrandt show additions in pen and ink or chalk by his hand and were presumably created as trial proofs for just this purpose (see lot 163).
However, most of Rembrandt’s counterproofs do not have any additional work, and the surprising number of surviving counterproofs of some subjects in Rembrandt's oeuvre suggest that they were also produced as finished works in their own right, to satisfy a discerning collector’s market hungry for such variants and oddities. The present sheet probably belongs to this second category, rather than being an intermediate trial proof.