Lot 84: ATTRIBUTED TO SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL (1600/02-1670) RIVER SCENE WITH BOATS BEFORE A DENSELY WOODED BANK.

Bears old numbering in pen and brown ink on the verso: No.410. Black chalk and grey wash. 102 by 214 mm. Provenance: Freiherr M. von Heyl zu Herrnsheim (L.2879); Dr. M.K.H. Rech (L.2745b). The extensive underdrawing found in so many of Salomon van Ruysdael's landscape paintings is often held up as the explanation for the fact that no preparatory drawings for these paintings are known; the artist appears simply to have drawn directly onto the panel or canvas, rather than working out his compositions in advance on paper. In the absence also of any surviving signed sheets, the attribution of drawings to this central figure of Dutch landscape art therefore depends on stylistic comparison with the underdrawings in his paintings, and on their general compositional similarities with the artist's painted works. On both these criteria, there would appear to be a good case for including this subtly constructed and delicately executed drawing in the small corpus of Ruysdael's works on paper. In a number of his paintings of the 1630s, Ruysdael turned away from the very powerful diagonal compositions for which he is best known and painted scenes such as this, depicting small numbers of boats by wooded riverbanks which lie more or less parallel to the picture plane; an example of a painting constructed in this way which is strikingly similar to the present drawing in its compositional conception is the Riverbank with two leafless trees of 1633, in The Hague (Mauritshuis, inv. 941; see Wolfgang Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, Berlin 1975, cat. 498A, fig.16). Dr. Wolfgang Schulz, however, while confiming that he believes this to be an autograph drawing of high quality, suggests a date of around 1640-44. Other drawings that can plausibly be attributed to Salomon van Ruysdael are to be found in Berlin, Paris (Louvre and Institut Neerlandais) and Rotterdam (see Dessins de Paysagists Hollandais du XVIIe Siecle, exhib. cat. Brussels/Rotterdam/Paris /Berne 1968-69, vol. I (catalogue), p.131).