The adoration of the shepherds: a night piece.

During his lifetime, Rembrandt's extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within, but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands, and it also explains why, three centuries later, they were affordable for Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott, who presented 37 Rembrandt prints to the National Art Gallery between 1952 and 1969.　

Time and time again, in depicting subjects with a long tradition in art, Rembrandt set himself apart by exploring in depth the reality of the event. And although later generations often criticised him for a lack of decorum, he aimed to be truthful to the (often biblical) text for the accurate setting of a scene that really mattered to him. He avoided short-cuts and fudging, and instead aimed at emotional authenticity. Thus Rembrandt asked himself what it would really be like if, in the small hours of a bitterly cold night, a group of shepherds were to enter a scarcely-lit stable where a man and a woman were sheltering with a newborn baby - the Christ Child. 

Rembrandt painted the subject, not afraid to make a real night scene of it, with all the technical difficulties entailed in rendering light effects in complete darkness so that they look natural. Painted in 1646, it formed was part of the series of scenes from the Life of Christ commissioned by the stadholder (chief magistrate) Frederik Hendrik. There are two known versions, the original in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and another, long attributed to him but now believed to be by an outstanding but unidentified student, in the National Gallery, London. This was the design used for New Zealand's first Christmas stamp (1960), also in Te Papa's collection (PH000519).

Rembrandt revisited the subject in a sketch-like etching with open hatching in Adoration of the Shepherds with a Lamp which is also in Te Papa's collection (1910-0001-1/19-80), one of a number of stylistically related etchings from the mid-1650s, and also in this slightly later work, which is elaborated to a greater degree and in the reading of the scene is closer to the paintings. This nocturne occupies a special place in Rembrandt's graphic oeuvre, not least because in the eight or nine of the known states (two further are posthumous), he plays a highly experimental game with light and dark. Rembrandt expert Filedt Kok refers, for example, to the existence of an impression in Washington that shows a stage between the fifth and sixth states, whether by using surface tone, by reworking elements or by scraping away burr or burnishing particular areas and drawing something new in their place.

According to Te Papa Summer Research Scholar, Anna Rigg, writing in April 2016, Te Papa's impression is either from the seventh or eighth of eleven states, one of the last to have been made by Rembrandt in his lifetime. The curved line defining the bottom of the Virgin’s pillow has been extended upwards. It precedes the ninth-state addition of strong vertical shading lines in the upper right corner and strong horizontals along the upper edge.