The chemical technique of etching was developed in the Middle Ages by Arabic armouries as a means of applying decoration to weapons. It flourished in the fifteenth century in south Germany, where the first etched prints on paper were printed towards the end of the century.
During the first decades of the seventeenth century Dutch artists like Esaias van de Velde, Jan van de Velde II and Willem Buytewech experimented with the technique. They were looking for greater tonality and an atmospheric effect in their landscape prints and tried to achieve this by breaking up the long contour lines into short strokes and dots.
Hercules Segers experimented with etching for a different reason: he tried to produce a painterly effect by printing on coloured paper or canvas, also working up his prints afterwards with a brush in colour and thus incidentally making every impression unique.Rembrandt must have taken more than a little interest in these developments, for he ultimately took the technique to extremes even more than had his predecessors. In his hands, etching became a fully fledged medium which occupied him at intervals for the rest of his life. This resulted in an oeuvre of some 290 etchings, all intended as substantive works of art. Rembrandt's masterly use of the drypoint and the unique deep black of many of his etchings were famous even in his own day and his work was much sought after by the many print collectors of the time.
see more of this article at Rembrandtpainting.net
