Baroque artist Jacob van Ruisdael was born at the end of the 17th century in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands and is considered one of the greatest Dutch landscape painters. During his career, the motifs as well as the style of the talented and versatile artist varied greatly. He left behind a dynamic body of work of about 700 paintings, 100 drawings and several etchings. A famous oil painting is "Waterfall with a low wooded hill", which can be admired today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. A famous student of Van Ruisdael was the artist Meindert Hobbema, who was a great follower of his teacher.
Van Ruisdael was taught by his father. His father was the frame maker of the artist Isaac de Goyer, who later gave himself the name Ruisdael. However, the nature and extent of his influence on his son's art cannot be clearly determined today, as Isaak's works cannot be clearly identified. Instead, in Jacob van Ruisdael's earliest works from 1646, the influence of Cornelis Vroom, a fellow artist and landscape architect from his hometown, is clearly evident. Van Ruisdael became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem as a young man. After making extensive art trips to the Netherlands and neighboring areas of Germany in the 1650s, he settled in Amsterdam. Van Ruisdael was made a free citizen of Amsterdam in 1659.
In Van Ruisdael's early work, for example in his painting entitled "Farmhouse in a Landscape," knowledgeable observers will discover his interesting obsession with trees. While Dutch artists used trees merely as decorative compositional devices, the creative Van Ruisdael elevated them to the main subject of his paintings. His trees are characterized by a powerful intensity. Detailed and precise, Van Ruisdael pre-sketched his motifs. Through an impasto application of paint on the canvases, he later gave depth and character to the foliage and trunks of his trees when painting.
The monumentality of his depicted landscapes increases with Van Ruisdael's age: the forms are more massive, the colors more vivid, and the composition more concentrated. One of his most masterful paintings is the depiction of a Jewish cemetery. The painting is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. The main motif, the three destroyed graves, is subordinated to the other objects of lesser importance, symbolizing in a sophisticated way the transience of temporal things.
After 1656, Van Ruisdael's color palette clearly becomes lighter. He finds his way back to his roots, his interest in forest scenes and the views of his native city Haarlem. The paintings show mainly large-scale panoramas of the flat Dutch landscape with a low horizon. The dominant feature in Van Ruisdael's late oil paintings is the wide, lush cloudy sky. The small people often seen in his paintings do not originate with Van Ruisdael himself. They were added later by other artists such as Adriaen van de Velde, Johannes Lingelbach, Philips Wouwerman and Claes Berchem.
Baroque artist Jacob van Ruisdael was born at the end of the 17th century in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands and is considered one of the greatest Dutch landscape painters. During his career, the motifs as well as the style of the talented and versatile artist varied greatly. He left behind a dynamic body of work of about 700 paintings, 100 drawings and several etchings. A famous oil painting is "Waterfall with a low wooded hill", which can be admired today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. A famous student of Van Ruisdael was the artist Meindert Hobbema, who was a great follower of his teacher.
Van Ruisdael was taught by his father. His father was the frame maker of the artist Isaac de Goyer, who later gave himself the name Ruisdael. However, the nature and extent of his influence on his son's art cannot be clearly determined today, as Isaak's works cannot be clearly identified. Instead, in Jacob van Ruisdael's earliest works from 1646, the influence of Cornelis Vroom, a fellow artist and landscape architect from his hometown, is clearly evident. Van Ruisdael became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem as a young man. After making extensive art trips to the Netherlands and neighboring areas of Germany in the 1650s, he settled in Amsterdam. Van Ruisdael was made a free citizen of Amsterdam in 1659.
In Van Ruisdael's early work, for example in his painting entitled "Farmhouse in a Landscape," knowledgeable observers will discover his interesting obsession with trees. While Dutch artists used trees merely as decorative compositional devices, the creative Van Ruisdael elevated them to the main subject of his paintings. His trees are characterized by a powerful intensity. Detailed and precise, Van Ruisdael pre-sketched his motifs. Through an impasto application of paint on the canvases, he later gave depth and character to the foliage and trunks of his trees when painting.
The monumentality of his depicted landscapes increases with Van Ruisdael's age: the forms are more massive, the colors more vivid, and the composition more concentrated. One of his most masterful paintings is the depiction of a Jewish cemetery. The painting is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. The main motif, the three destroyed graves, is subordinated to the other objects of lesser importance, symbolizing in a sophisticated way the transience of temporal things.
After 1656, Van Ruisdael's color palette clearly becomes lighter. He finds his way back to his roots, his interest in forest scenes and the views of his native city Haarlem. The paintings show mainly large-scale panoramas of the flat Dutch landscape with a low horizon. The dominant feature in Van Ruisdael's late oil paintings is the wide, lush cloudy sky. The small people often seen in his paintings do not originate with Van Ruisdael himself. They were added later by other artists such as Adriaen van de Velde, Johannes Lingelbach, Philips Wouwerman and Claes Berchem.
Page 1 / 3