The art historian Wolfgang Stechow identified thirteen themes within the Dutch Golden Age landscape genre, and Ruisdael’s work encompasses all but two of them, excelling at most: forests, rivers, dunes and country roads, panoramas, imaginary landscapes, Scandinavian waterfalls, marines, beachscapes, winter scenes, town views, and nocturnes. Ruisdael’s subjects became unusually varied. This portrays a rugged range with the highest peak in the clouds. Ruisdael shaped landscape painting traditions worldwide, from the English Romantics to the Barbizon school in France, and the Hudson River School in the US, and influenced generations of Dutch landscape artists.ĭuring Ruisdael’s last period he began to depict mountain scenes, such as Mountainous and Wooded Landscape with a River, dateable to the late 1670s. Today it is spread across private and institutional collections around the world the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Hermitage Museum in St. Ruisdael’s work was in demand in the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. There is difficulty in attributing Ruisdael’s work, which has not been helped by the fact that three members of his family were also landscape painters, some of whom spelled their name “Ruysdael”: his father Isaack van Ruisdael, his well-known uncle Salomon van Ruysdael, and his cousin, confusingly called Jacob van Ruysdael. Hobbema’s work has at times been confused with Ruisdael’s. Ruisdael’s only registered pupil was Meindert Hobbema, one of several artists who painted figures in his landscapes. In total he produced more than 150 Scandinavian views featuring waterfalls. In these, the sky often took up two-thirds of the canvas. In his late work, conducted when he lived and worked in Amsterdam, he added city panoramas and seascapes to his regular repertoire. After a trip to Germany in 1650, his landscapes took on a more heroic character. From 1646 he painted Dutch countryside scenes of remarkable quality for a young man. Prolific and versatile, Ruisdael depicted a wide variety of landscape subjects. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement when Dutch painting became highly popular. 1629 – 10 March 1682) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher.

Picturesque landscape