A Dutch Landscape with a Raid

Approaching in the foreground is a group of riders, who are leading stolen cattle and peasants in chains. At the bottom of the picture shots are being fired at people running away. The people have a narrative function; but they are part of a faceless crowd, and one of their additional functions is to give the painting a sense of depth. The painting is structured by strong contrasts between horizontal and vertical elements: the line of the horizon is kept low, and thus suggests extreme distance, while the trees towering high into the sky give an impression of direct proximity. The cloudy sky is very important to van Ruysdael, as indeed it was to van Goyen. The sky could not have been painted like this without attention to nature. Works like these, which are strikingly “compositional” in style, mark the start of the classical period of Dutch landscape painting, which replaced the tonal phase with its often simple diagonal compositions from the mid-17th century.| Prestel Museum Guides - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2017