Ruysdael, Salomon van

Description:

Haarlem 1600 - 1670
41 x 35,5 cm
River Landscape with a Fortified Tower and a Fortress. Oil/panel, on the defence wall monogrammed and dated SvR 1662.
Benedict, Paris
Nijstadt, Den Haag, 1957
Sale Gemeentenmuseum Den Haag, April 1972, No. 68
Private Collection Solingen
Exhibited:
Delft, Het Pinsenhof, Kunst en Antiekbeurs 1957
Lit.: published in:
Kurt J. Müllenmeister, Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jh., 1973, vol. 1, no. 112, XXVII.
Wolfgang Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael. Eine Einführung in seine Kunst . Mit kritischem Katalog der Gemälde., 1975, no. 34A.
In the large Ruysdael family of painters probably Salomon was the most down-to-earth and wealthy who spent his life almost exclusively in Haarlem. He was chairman of the painters' guild and held a honorary position in the city. His closeness to the works of Jan van Goyen, especially to his river landscapes, is obvious. Kurt Muellenmeister also devotes an entire section to Ruysdael in his three-volume publication "Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jh." (in 1973 and two years before Stechow's catalogue raisonné is published): "(...) The tone in Ruysdael's pictures goes (...) over gray and green into silver gray and later in a shade of brown with black undertones. A good example from this period is the River Landscape shown under number 112 from 1662. Ruysdael's great painterly ability gives us these masterful works of the late period (...)".
The small oak panel is in very good condition, hardly worn or retouched. The structure of the wood shimmering through here and there in the sky (in earlier times often as a loss of a strong
cleaning viewed) is thus deliberately designed by the painter and makes the special charm of the sky part.