Country House in a Park

Jacob van Ruisdael represents the pinnacle of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. This great artist, the son of a painter and the nephew of Salomon van Ruysdael (see NGA 2007.116.1), began his career in Haarlem but moved to Amsterdam in about 1656. His long and productive career yielded a wide variety of landscape scenes that reflect Ruisdael’s vision of the grandeur and powerful forces of nature.

Depictions of elegant country houses came into vogue in the latter half of the seventeenth century as increasing numbers of wealthy Dutch merchants built homes along the river Vecht and in other picturesque locations in the Dutch Republic. Yet not all of these seemingly accurate representations portray real structures; sometimes the scenes were purely imaginary, intended to project an ideal of country existence rather than its actuality. In this painting, Ruisdael, who depicted views of country houses only at the end of his career, either created an imaginary view of a country estate or superimposed the existing town home of a patron onto this scene of a wilderness garden. The house, with a yellow façade articulated by pilasters, a stringcourse, and a balustrade, would be very much at home on the bank of an Amsterdam canal.

The garden seems to be an artistic invention as well. The natural and artificial components of Ruisdael’s garden are enjoyed by the various groups of people who amble about. An elaborate fountain, surmounted by a small sculpted figure of a boy, is counterbalanced by an even more dramatic fountain in the right center. Just beyond, two figures gesture in surprise as they are startled by the water from a trick fountain spurting up around them. The soaring Norwegian spruces, exotic specimens native to Scandinavia that had been used in Dutch gardens since at least the 1640s, provide visual depth as well as striking contrasts with the cloudy sky.