In the _Three Cottages_ dry-point is used with magnificent effect. Early impressions of this masterpiece have a richness, a bloom, which is unmatched among Rembrandt’s landscape plates. A fine impression of the third state, with the added shading on the gabled end of the first cottage, represents the plate admirably. To be seen at its best, however, it should not be too heavily charged with ink, since the tree forms thereby are confused. Work such as this is so seemingly simple that one may readily overlook the power of analysis and the superb draughtsmanship it displays. Everyone who loves Rembrandt’s landscapes--and who that knows them does not love them?--must bitterly regret that at about this time, in the very plenitude of his powers, he saw fit to bring his landscape work to a close. It is true that we have the _Goldweigher’s Field_ of 1651--an unsurpassed masterpiece--and in the following year the _Landscape with a Road Beside a Canal_ and _A Clump of Trees with a Vista_; but had he treated a landscape motive with the passion which breathes from the _Three Crosses_, _Christ Presented to the People_, or the _Presentation in the Temple_, how much richer and fuller would landscape art have been! The _Goldweigher’s Field_, by tradition the country seat of the Receiver General, Uytenbogært, whose portrait Rembrandt had etched in 1639 (The _Goldweigher_), is, in point of suggestiveness, second to none of Rembrandt’s plates. The eye is gently led from field to fertile field, each with its own individual character and filled with interesting little details, and finally rests upon the quiet sea which stretches to the horizon. Contemporary with Rembrandt, treating scenes essentially the same, a whole school of etchers produced an enormous number of plates, many of them charming, but none to be classed with the permanently great work in the history of the art. [Illustration: REMBRANDT. GOLDWEIGHER’S FIELD Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 12⅝ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: JACOB RUYSDAEL. WHEAT FIELD Size of the original etching, 4 × 6 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] HERCULES SEGHERS is interesting because of his choice of wild, rugged mountains for his subject-matter and of his experiments in color printing, but as an etcher he is of historical importance only.