River Landscape with a Castle on a High Cliff

Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes are almost always pure invention. In this painting, the building on the hill resembles Bentheim Castle, a landmark that appears frequently in Ruisdael’s work. But the artist has placed the castle in an imaginary river landscape unlike Bentheim’s actual setting, and has arranged the foliage, paths, and clouds to achieve a unified decorative effect. Still, Ruisdael’s close and intensive study of nature (recorded in dozens of quick sketches and more finished drawings) ensures that the composition achieves a plausible reality.

The beauty and observation of nature in Ruisdael's work exerted a powerful influence, not only on his contemporaries but also on subsequent generations of artists extending well into the twentieth century. Ruisdael’s work was particularly inspiring to English and American landscape painters.