Painting is one of the oldest forms of art in the human civilization; from the primitive cave paintings to those detailed and refined works of the Renaissance. Paintings are typically divided into categories by their genre, for instance, history, portrait, and landscape. Landscape paintings are those, which either only show or place greater emphasis on the natural surroundings such as rivers, mountains, and trees. This genre was popular among the ancient Greeks and Romans but later faded in and out of favor. Landscape paintings in Europe were revived during the 16th century while in East Asia they had already become a separate genre around the 10th century (Landscape Painting in Chinese Art, A Brief History).
Rembrandt van Rijn was born in 1606 in the Netherlands and is considered one of the greatest Dutch painters of the era and worked during the Golden Age of Dutch paintings (Editor). It was then that the various genres of painting were created and arranged in order of their importance. History, portrait, and genre formed the top three while landscape and still life formed the lower levels (Gersh-Nesic). Rembrandts painting titled “Landscape with a stone bridge”, 1638, which was oil on wood is considered to be one of the few traditional landscape done by him. The painting shows a river in the foreground with men on a boat and a road on the left corner. In the middle ground stands the stone bridge with another boat just behind it and people and cattle on both banks. In the