Landscape with a Waterfall

Jacob van Ruisdael, born in Haarlem, was one of the most famous landscape painters of seventeenth-century Holland. As the creator of monumental compositions, whether dramatic forest scenes or sweeping panoramic views, he was the foremost exponent of the classical phase of Dutch landscape painting. Ruisdael began painting large horizontal landscapes with waterfalls during the 1660s and early 1670s. Landscapes such as this one were inspired by the waterfalls painted in the 1650s by Allart van Everdingen, who had travelled to Scandinavia. Ruisdael soon became famous for the genre in his own right, creating a poetic and sometimes brooding mood in his landscapes.

Plays and poems were written in his honour and even his name was seen as synonymous with his subject matter, for ‘Ruisdael’ means ‘noisy valley’ in Dutch. This painting belonged to the first director of the Louvre, baron Vivant Denon (1747–1825), and was described at the latter’s sale in 1826 as “a rustic landscape the melancholy of which inspires reverie. … Joseph Vernet said that it seemed you could almost hear the murmur of the water. It was Monsieur Denon’s favourite picture.”

The 4th Marquess of Hertford acquired the picture in 1850.