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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

Road trough Grain Fields near the Zuider Zee

ca. 1660 - 1662
Oil on canvas.
44.8 x 54.6 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
357
(
1934.18
)
ROOM 28
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  

Jacob van Ruisdael is documented in Amsterdam in 1657, the date when he applied to be baptised into the Reformed Church. It has been suggested that his reasons for moving to Amsterdam included purely commercial ones related to the art market, as the city offered artists more opportunities and chances of success. Once there, Van Ruisdael widened his range of motifs and started to paint rushing streams, woodland scenes, windmills, winter landscapes and marine views. Between the 1650s and early 1660s the artist devoted himself most actively to exploring the visual possibilities of rushing streams, cascades in forests, rocky areas and windmills, whose forms he had painted against the skyline in his earlier works.

Cultivated fields are a motif to be found in Van Ruisdael’s work from an early date, reappearing in a variety of forms and in different contexts throughout his career. He depicted fields on areas of low land, on hills, on the edges of woods, near the seashore or near the still waters of ponds. These fields of ripe wheat, bathed in a warm light, frequently include (as we see here) figures walking along paths or resting along the edges. Various art historians have drawn attention to the parallels between figures of this type and those that are to be found in the traditional series representing the months of the year or the seasons. Although it might be possible to see Van Ruisdael’s depictions of ripe wheat fields as relating to summer or to the month of August, the idea has been rejected as his views are not particularly similar to those of the earlier type nor do they include figures engaged in any type of agricultural activities.

In the present canvas Van Ruisdael created the pictorial space through the light, achieving a harmonious organisation of the area nearest to the foreground through delicate, balanced contrasts of light and shade. The perspective, as in many of his compositions, is emphasised by the winding path on which we see a herd of cattle and figures, leading the eye into the middle distance. Further into the pictorial space is a village set among the leafy trees whose tops break the horizon line. The particular location depicted in this work has not been identified but it is thought to be close to Naarden with the Zuider Zee visible in the background. The canvas has been dated to the 1660s and has been compared to a painting in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

Mar Borobia

17th Century17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael.  Road trough Grain Fields near the Zuider Zee
Road trough Grain Fields near the Zuider Zee
Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael.  Road trough Grain Fields near the Zuider Zee
Road trough Grain Fields near the Zuider Zee
Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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