Tag: Jacob van Ruisdael

Bentheim Castle by Jacob van Ruisdael

Bentheim Castle by Jacob Van Ruisdael (1653)

Today I am moving away from the horrors depicted in the Max Beckmann’s painting which I featured yesterday and move to a beautiful work by Jacob van Ruisdael, one of the greatest pure landscape painters in the Netherlands in the 17th century.  I have featured his works before in My Daily Art Display.  On January 9th 2011 I looked at his painting Dam Square and on February 18th I featured his hauntingly exquisite work entitled The Jewish Cemetery.  Both are worth looking at if you haven’t seen them before.     I never tire of his amazing paintings.  My Daily Art Display today features another of his works entitled Bentheim Castle which  van Ruisdael completed around 1653.

Jacob van Ruisdael was born in Haarlem in 1628 and was brought up in an artistic household.  His father, Isaak van Ruysdael and his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael were both landscape painters.  Little is known about Jacob’s early artistic training but it is thought that his father probably taught him with guidance from his uncle.  At the age of twenty he was admitted as a member of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem.  The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists especially in the Low Countries.   They were named in honour of the Evangelist Luke, who was the patron saint of artists.

Unfortunately during his lifetime Jacob van Ruisdael’s artistic talent was not appreciated and by all accounts he led a poverty-stricken existence.  At the age of fifty three the Haarlem council was petitioned for his admission into the town’s almshouse.  He died in Amsterdam a year later in 1682 and his body was brought back to be buried in Haarlem

Jacob van Ruisdael travelled considerably during his lifetime but seldom went outside his own country.  However it is known that Ruisdael visited the small town of Bentheim, in Westphalia close to the Dutch-German border in the early 1650’s when he travelled to the region with his friend and fellow artist Nicolaes Berchem,  who, like Ruisdael, came from Haarlem.  Bentheim Castle received a first mention in historical records back in 1020 AD when the owner of the fortress who was named as Count Otto of Northeim, and who would later become the Duke of Bavaria, married.  He had, at this time, just married Richenza, the daughter of the Count of Werl, whose family was one of the most influential and wealth dynasties in Westphalia.  The castle changed hands during many battles over the centuries.  Nowadays the fate of Castle Bentheim is in the hands of the Hereditary Prince Carl Ferdinand of Bentheim and Steinfurt, who was born in 1977. Since 2007 he has been married to Hereditary Princess Elna-Margret of Bentheim and Steinfurt.

Jacob van Ruisdael’s favourite subjects were simple woodland scenes.  He was influenced by two great Netherlandish landscape painters of the time, Allaert van Everdingen and Meindert Hobbema.   Ruisdael forte was the depiction of trees in his works.  His rendering of the foliage was second to none. At the time of this painting which was completed in the 1650’s, Ruisdael portrayal of landscape scenes was bettered by nobody.  He stood out from his contemporaries when it came to the painting of woodlands, rivers, waterfalls, mountains, and even seascapes.

His landscape works became larger which allowed him more space for his portrayal of his giant oak and beech trees as well as the plethora of shrubs.  Look at today’s featured work simply entitled Bentheim Castle for an example of this.  No matter how the castle dominates the landscape, Ruisdael must have spent an enormous amount of time painting the surrounding trees and vegetation which can be seen like a skirt around the castle fortress.  Just take time and carefully study the detail of the vegetation in the foreground. Some of it has been brightened by a sudden shaft of sunlight whilst most of it in the middle ground remains in shade.  The colours the artist used in his paintings around this period became more vivid and space increases in both height and depth.  In this work by Ruisdael, look at the great variety of colours the artist has used to paint the flora.

What we see before us is the castle as seen from the south-west above which Ruisdael has given us a wonderful rendering of cloud formation.  It is an idealized landscape and not topographically accurate as the actual castle is situated on an unimpressive and somewhat low hill. However, Ruisdael, in order to add grandeur to his landscape work, has made the castle almost look like it is perched atop a small mountain.  Why would he do that?  Probably because placing the castle so high and so distant gave it a more commanding appearance but I believe his main reason was it offered him the opportunity to flood the middle and foreground with a small forest with all the colours that brings to the work.  In amongst the wooded slopes we see the red roof tops of the white houses and cottages.  This colour red manages to set off the verdant colour of the flora that surrounds them and which runs down to the foreground of the painting.  One can see that for Ruisdael the painting of trees and flora was his main joy.  Jacob van Ruisdael loved the view of this ancient fortress and over the years painted more than fifteen landscapes featuring Bentheim Castle, viewed from different viewpoints and seen in various surroundings.

I marvel at the detail in this painting and just wonder how long it took the twenty-five year old artist to complete it.  The painting is housed in Dublin at the National Gallery of Ireland.

The Jewish Cemetery by Jacob van Ruisdael

The Jewish Cemetery by Jacob van Ruisdael (c.1660)

When I come to think about the painting I am going to use for My Daily Art Display I like to try and find one by an artist I haven’t featured before.  I also like to showcase an artist I had not heard of previously so that when I research his or her life it is a learning curve for me.  Today, however My Daily Art Display is a three-fold repeat which limits what I can say, without being accused of repeating myself.

 Firstly I have offered you a painting by Jan van Ruisdael before (January 9th) but I will not apologise for that as he is an amazing painter and has completed many superb works of art.   Secondly, the painting today is a Vanitas-type painting, a type of painting, which I talked about when I offered you the Still Life of Food and Drink by Willem Heda on February 11th, and lastly this painting resembles in many ways the painting by Arnold Böcklin which I gave you on January 5th.  Having said all that, I have to tell you that when I was looking through some art books for my next presentation I was immediately taken aback by the strength of this painting and the aura that emanates from it.

My Daily Art Display today is The Jewish Cemetery by Jacob van Ruisdael which he completed around 1660 and now hangs in the Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister in Dresden with a larger version in the Detroit Institute of Arts.  This is a Vanitas genre painting, which is a type of painting that depicts an object or collection of objects symbolizing the brevity of life and the transience of all earthly pleasures and achievements.  In other words it is a painting which reminds us that we are not immortal and notwithstanding how rich or powerful we are –  we will all die sooner or later.

There is a definite melancholic and depressing feeling about this painting.  There is also that sense of foreboding which was present in Arthur Böcklin Island of the Dead which I gave you on January 5th.  The ruins, the graves and the dark skies set the mood of the painting.  Ruisdael had this uncanny talent to be able create such feelings in how and what he depicts.   This is a painting of the Portugeuse-Jewish Cemetery at Ouderkerk on the Amstel River close to Amsterdam, however to be absolutely accurate, I must tell you that only some of the elements in the painting actually exist such as the three large tombs shown in the mid-ground, but that’s about it !  

The backdrop to the cemetery bears no similarity to the place at Ouderkerk.  There are no ruins overlooking the actual cemetery.  The ruins Ruisdael painted were the remains of the Egmond Castle which is situated near Alkmaar some thirty miles away.   There is no river running through the cemetery but Ruysdael just used it to portray the fact that the water like time rushes away from us.  The landscape, the river and the “added-in” ruins were just figments of Ruysdael’s imagination but one has to admit they do lend themselves well to the atmosphere he wanted to project.   

The three large tombs in the middle ground, which immediately catch one’s eye, the dead beech tree in the right foreground and the broken tree trunk overhanging the fast flowing river all indicate allegorically the fast approach of death.  However, Ruisdael does offer us a glimmer of hope in the way we can see a shaft of light penetrating the black clouds.  We can also see a rainbow and if we look carefully there are signs of flourishing growth amongst the dead trees, so he is telling us there may be a better life still to come after death.   Art historians have interpreted this painting simply as a reminder that man lives in a transient world and that despite being beset by sinful temptations there is always hope for salvation and deliverance.

Dam Square in Amsterdam by Jacob van Ruisdael

Dam Square Amsterdam by Jacob van Ruisdael (1670)

Today, Jacob van Ruisdael is my featured artist in My Daily Art Display.   He was born in Haarlem in 1628 and was brought up in an artistic household.  His father, Isaak van Ruysdael and his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael were both landscape painters.  Little is known about Jacob’s early artistic training but it is thought that his father probably taught him with guidance from his uncle.  At the age of twenty he was admitted as a member of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem.  The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists especially in the Low Countries.   They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, who was the patron saint of artists.

Unfortunately during his lifetime Jacob van Ruisdael’s artistic talent was not appreciated and by all accounts he led a poverty-stricken existence.  At the age of fifty three the Haarlem council was petitioned for his admission into the town’s almshouse.  He died in Amsterdam a year later in 1682 and his body was brought back to be buried in Haarlem

Jacob van Ruisdael travelled considerably during his lifetime but seldom went outside his own country.   He was a prolific painter with over seven hundred paintings and a hundred drawings attributed to him.  His great love was to paint countryside scenes showing fields of corn and windmills as well as woodland scenes.  He was also a renowned painter of trees and their foliage.    Another favourite subject of his was seascapes and the neighbouring dune lands.  He also liked to paint waterfalls based on the work of Allart van Everdingen, the Dutch painter, who had travelled extensively in Scandinavia.

Today’s painting, The Dam Square in Amsterdam, completed in 1670 is neither a landscape nor a seascape.  The subject is Dam Square in Amsterdam, a place which he was very familiar with as he lived on the south side of the square at this time.   The square was dominated by the old Amsterdam municipal weighbridge and one can see several bales of goods under the canopy waiting to be weighed.   On the right of the building one can see the Damark with its sailing boats and the tower of Oude Kerk.  In the foreground of the painting there are a large number of figures.  It is not thought that Ruisdael actually painted these as he was not an established figure specialist.  Experts believe they may have been painted by the Rotterdam artist Gerard van Battem.  The pale light from the left of the painting casting long shadows across the square suggests that it is daybreak.

 His artistic works although not fully appreciated during his lifetime have since his death been highly praised and he is now often considered the greatest Dutch landscape painter of all time.