Jacob van Ruisdael
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Ruisdael, Jacob van
Bibliography
See W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century (1968); S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings (2002), Jacob Van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape (2005), and Jacob van Ruisdael: Windmills and Water Mills (2011).
Ruisdael, Jacob van
Born in 1628 or 1629 in Haarlem; died in 1682 in Amsterdam; buried Mar. 14, 1682, in Haarlem. Dutch painter and graphic artist.
Ruisdael, who probably studied with his uncle S. van Ruysdael, was influenced by the work of P. Potter, J. van Goyen, and H. Seghers. In 1648 he became a master in the guild of Haarlem. Ruisdael’s early works are modest views of Haarlem’s environs (for example, The Small House in the Grove, 1646, Hermitage, Leningrad). From roughly 1650 to 1655, Ruisdael traveled throughout eastern Holland and western Germany. During his period abroad he painted a number of dramatic landscapes, including The Jewish Cemetery (Dresden Picture Gallery; variant in the Detroit Institute of Arts).
Ruisdael settled in Amsterdam circa 1656. In his mature period he painted urban, rural, river, and sea views (for example. The Millage of Egmond aan Zee, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Windmill at Wijk, 1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). He also painted Norwegian mountain landscapes (Waterfalls, Mauritshuis, The Hague) and scenes of thickets along marshes and forest streams (The Marsh, Hermitage). His Norwegian landscapes are reminiscent of the works of A. Everdingen. Precise line and palpable form are combined in these works with an exquisite rendering of aerial perspective and a play of light and shadow. Ruisdael’s colors are marked by subtle gradations of tone. The juxtaposition of ashen gray and faded green foliage, grayish brown soil, and a blue cloud-filled sky predominates.
The emotional tension in many of Ruisdael’s later works eventually took the form of subjective gloom (for example, Mountains in Norway, Hermitage).
REFERENCES
Fekhner, E. Iu. lakob van Reisdal i ego kartiny v Gosudarstvennom Ermitazhe. Leningrad, 1958.Rosenberg, J. Jacob van Ruisdael. Boston [1928].
Wiegand, W. Ruisdael-Studien. Hamburg, 1968. (Dissertation.)