Jacob van Ruisdael: 12 works

'Ruisdael is considered by many to be one of the originators of the landscape as an independent subject matter.'

'Jacob van Ruisdael, one of the great Dutch landscape painters of the 1600s, explored a range of landscape motifs in his work, including forest scenes, seascapes, beach scenes, and panoramic landscapes. In Bridge with a Sluice, Ruisdael made an ordinary object monumental by making it larger than all the other elements in the painting, thereby calling attention to its use and placement in the countryside.'

'Jacob van Ruisdael was the most important painter of realistic landscapes in seventeenth-century Holland. His work was enormously influential on English landscape painters around 1800.'

'Jacob van Ruisdael probably painted it when he was in his early twenties.'

'Jacob van Ruisdael, whose oeuvre includes more than 700 paintings, ranks among the most important Dutch landscape painters of the second half of the 17th century. He was reasonably paid for his works, although the painters of "Italian" landscapes received larger sums.'

'Twenty-seven paintings in which cornfields feature prominently are known from his hand. The often-luminous yellow of the corn may have inspired him to include the fields in his landscapes.'

'In a poetic, yet convincing manner, Jacob van Ruisdael captured the changing effects of light passing through clouds and the play of sunlight and shadow across the earth. He contrasts the uncut wheat in the field and the newly bound sheaves on the right, the broad expanse of blue sky above and the low, yellow fields below.'

'In the early fifties Ruisdael traveled in the wooded hill country of Germany near the Dutch border. His interest in this romantic landscape was reinforced after about 1656, when he settled in Amsterdam and became familiar with the views of Scandinavian landscapes by Allart van Everdingen.'

'Ruisdael probably found inspiration in the landscapes he saw on his journey to Bentheim, in Germany.'

'While Ruisdael did travel to western Germany, he did not visit the mountainous region of Scandinavia that is evoked in this painting. He was likely to have been inspired by the popular landscapes of Allart van Everdingen, who had visited Norway in 1644.'

'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.'

'One of the greatest landscape painters born in Holland during the 17th century, the young Jacob van Ruysdael was particularly fond of depicting subjects from the forests and sand dunes near his home town of Haarlem.'