Jacob van Ruisdael's Most Famous Paintings

Jacob van Ruisdael was the most accomplished landscape painter from the Dutch Golden Age. His finest work would also inspire many European artists who followed on in the centuries after.

There was a calm and barren nature to many of his landscape paintings, where a key object would sit centrally, and the rest of the scene would be filled with a flat environment with little dramatic detail. Often he would focus on a tall structure such as a tower or castle, and perhaps just a few figures in the foreground to provide an element of perspective. Over his career, though, he would vary his style and in some other examples there would be greater detail and undulations across these environments. He also produced a number of windmill depictions in which they were pulled closer to the viewer, allowing more detail to be added and a very different atmosphere to be produced. There is a charm found within the paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael which perfectly captures the beauty of the Dutch countryside and his work remains just as popular today.

Whilst the Dutch Golden Age brought about a wealth of innovation and expertise within the visual arts, it was rare for someone to prove as influential as Jacob van Ruisdael would prove to be. A whole host of European landscape painters would study, even love, his work right across the continent. He is certainly regarded as the most significant landscape painter from 17th century Netherlands and is known to have been naturally gifted from an early age. He was also a highly accomplished draughtsman as well, with these talents providing the base to many of his paintings. Both mediums have been collected with relish by a number of prominent art galleries and museums around the world, with the artist's oeuvre best served by the likes of the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

As was often the case within 17th century Netherlands, Jacob was just one of several artists found within his family. They also focused on the landscape genre, which has made it difficult to attribute some of the paintings that have been given their signature. The artist that we focus on here is undoubtedly the most talented to have come from the family, but other names to look out for include his father Isaack, uncle Salomon van Ruysdael, and also one of his cousins, Jacob van Ruysdael (note the alternative surname). This lineage was also very important in persuading Jacob into this industry into the first place, as well as influencing the type of style and content that he would choose to use. There would have been plenty of other artists around Haarlem and Amsterdam during his lifetime, but it was his family members that gave him his initial artistic direction. Jacob managed to build a strong reputation within his own lifetime which ensured that his work would become in-demand right across the Dutch Republic.