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Jacob van Ruisdael (artist) Dutch, c. 1628/1629 - 1682 Forest Scene, c. 1655 oil on canvas overall: 105.5 x 123.4 cm (41 9/16 x 48 9/16 in.) Widener Collection 1942.9.80 On View |
The culmination of Dutch landscape painting occurs in the work of Jacob van Ruisdael. This great painter began his career in Haarlem but moved to Amsterdam around 1656. Throughout his long and productive professional life he portrayed many types of scenes, but his most characteristic paintings are those in which massive oak trees with craggy branches tower above the rugged countryside.
Ruisdael had a vision of the grandeur and forces of nature quite different from that of his pupil Meindert Hobbema. Figures in his paintings seem dwarfed by the elements of nature. In this scene a man and a woman walk along a path near some grazing sheep in the middle distance, but they are almost inconsequential in comparison to the broad waterfall, the rocks, and the huge fallen birch tree in the foreground.
The mood in Ruisdael's paintings is somber. The clouds are heavy and gray, and the greens of the grass and foliage are dark. Trees do not grow easily for their twisted roots need to grasp onto rocky outcroppings for support and nourishment. Death is also part of Ruisdael's world. The massive broken trees in the foreground are not just compositional devices, they are conscious reminders of the transitoriness of life and the inevitability of death.