ings, each giving certain essential features of the
final print. The most interesting is the _Landscape with a Rolling
Horse_.[11] Here we see that the horse, apparently the happiest of
impulsive inspirations, is instead a carefully considered part of the
final design, copied from the drawing previously done on the spot. As
the horse in the drawing is the mirror image of that in the print, we
can feel certain that the drawing came first and not the etching. Two
other drawings[12] (figures 4 and 5) delineate the clump of trees, in
form and placement very similar to the print. A fourth[13] (figure 6) is
a sketch of a hay barn of the type shown in the print, evidently quite
common in the Dutch countryside, and a fifth[14] (figure 7) foreshadows
the scheme of composition used in the print, principally the
relationship of the road and the dark central mass. All these drawings
are the mirror reversal of the print.

[Illustration: FIGURE 3

_Landscape with a rolling horse._ Drawing by Rembrandt. After Benesch,
vol. 6, fig. 1444. (Smithsonian photo 59391, with the permission of
Phaidon Press, Ltd., and the Groningen Museum.)]

[Illustration: FIGURE 4

_A clump of trees._ Drawing by Rembrandt. After Benesch, vol. 4, fig.
1001. (Smithsonian photo 59392, with the permission of Phaidon Press,
Ltd.)]

[Illustration: FIGURE 5

_Farm building among trees._ Drawing by Rembrandt. (_Photo courtesy of
the Albertina Museum, Vienna._)]

[Illustration: FIGURE 6

_Farmstead with a hay barn._ Drawing by Rembrandt. After Benesch, vol.
6, fig. 1458. (Smithsonian photo 59393, with the permission of Phaidon
Press, Ltd., and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.)]

[Illustration: FIGURE 7

_Farm buildings beside a road with distant farmstead._ Drawing by
Rembrandt. (_Photo courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford._)]

It is very much a modern taste to admire spontaneity more than craft. We
must understand that Rembrandt's work was anything but spontaneous in
execution. The existence of so many drawings prior to this print
certainly suggests that Rembrandt collected his ideas from many sources,
on the spot, but did his finished work in the quiet of his studio, with
his notes ready at hand. He used the sketches as the raw material for a
work of art. Rembrandt said that the only rule that should bind the
artist is nature,[15] but he was certainly not distracted by nature. The
individual genius here lies in assembling many observatio