Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook (1658): Art, History and Details

Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook (1658) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Since the great majority of Rembrandt's works are portraits or depictions of biblical and mythological subjects, human figures are an important element of his oeuvre. During the course of a long career Rembrandt produced nine etchings of nudes, conducting a searching analysis of the feminine form. Rembrandt was an extremely innovative printmaker who experimented continuously. He understood that in etching he could obtain varied effects by controlling the inking and wiping of the plate and by printing on different types of paper. For this rare, early impression, Rembrandt carefully wiped the plate clean so that a thin layer of tone would unify the work and create the illusion that the figure is emerging from a shadowy background. Its beauty is further enhanced by the beige-toned Japanese paper, which adds warmth and a special glow to the flesh. Understandably, this superb impression once belonged to the Dukes of Devonshire and Chatsworth, who formed one of the finest old master print collections still in private hands.

Object facts

• Title: Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook
• Date: 1658
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching with drypoint and surface tone
• Dimensions: Sheet: 15.9 x 8.1 cm (6 1/4 x 3 3/16 in.); Platemark: 15.9 x 7.9 cm (6 1/4 x 3 1/8 in.); Secondary Support: 20.9 x 11.7 cm (8 1/4 x 4 5/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1997.4

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major Neoclassical Marble, Rare Korean Sculpture, Other Recent CMA Acquisitions Now on View,” April 16, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Glaubinger, Jane. "The Experimental Rembrandt." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 41, no. 1 (January 2001): 6-7.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.