Lot 24: Salomon van Ruysdael , Naarden 1600/3 - 1670 Haarlem Landscape with a Fence oil on panel

signed and dated lower left S.W.RVYESDAEL 1631 oil on panel

measurements note 14 7/8 by 21 3/8 in.; 37.8 by 54.3 cm.

Zurich, 1947, no. 401;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, October 2, 1987-January 3, 1988, no. 90.

W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1938, p. 18, cat. no. 230;
L. von Baldass, "Neue Erwerbungen der Wiener Gemäldegalerie," in Belvedere 23, 1938-1943, p. 173;
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sonderausstellungen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in der Neuen Burg, Aus den Neuerwerbungen..., Vienna 1940, p. 17
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Katalog der Gemäldegalerie, vol. II, Vlamen, Holländer, Deutsche, Franzosen, Vienna 1958, p. 118, cat. no. 335;
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Zweite, durchgesehene und ergäanzte Auflage des Katalogs 1958, Vienna 1963, no. 335;
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Katalog der Gemäldegalerie: Holländisch Meister des 15., 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Vienna 1972, p. 82;
P.C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exhibition catalogue, Boston 1987, p. 466-67, cat. no. 90;
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Vienna 1991, plate 497, reproduced.

With Paul Cassirer, Berlin, about 1926;
L. Lobmeyr, Vienna;
Private Collection, Vienna (lost due to Nazi persecution);
Acquired by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna in 1939 (Inv. No. 6972);
Restituted to the heir of the pre WWII owner, 2008.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
In a tranquil open landscape, a group of peasants are waiting in the lee of a bank under a cloudy sky. The quintessentially Dutch landscape is reminiscent of the sandy countryside of Het Gooi just south of Naarden, where Ruysdael came from, or the edge of the dunes near his adoptive city of Haarlem.υ1 This is an early work by Ruysdael, dating from the period when he and Jan van Goyen were pioneering the so-called "tonal" landscape, in which they both painted the Dutch landscape in muted tones of green, yellow and grey, showing it from a naturalistic low viewpoint, with a low horizon line allowing the characteristically Dutch sky, painted in silvery grey tones, to dominate. Eliminating strong colours and allowing variations of muted tones to describe the Dutch landscape gives pictures like this a characteristic mood, and allows for a great degree of subtlety in their depiction. The emphasis on tone rather than color is heightened by the delight in the application of paint which one finds in all of Ruysdael's best work of all periods. Here, the horizon details to the right are worked into the still wet underlying paint, and the sky immediately above the horizon is painted in a series of swirling staccato brushstrokes that are spectacular. So well-preserved is this picture that they can easily be read and understood, and Ruysdael's swift and sure virtuoso brushwork, and moreover his evident delight in applying paint and moving it about the surface of his work, can be appreciated to the full with the naked eye. One thing that marks this work out from the majority of his pictures of this time is the sunlight that floods in at an extreme angle from outside the picture plane to the left. At first it only hints at its presence by catching a single dead branch of the tree to the left, then lights only the tips of the uppermost leaves of the hedge behind the wooden fence on the bank, until finally it radiates through the open gate in the middle, illuminating the vertical wooden posts and causing the brown soil to glow in a streak of yellow paint that continues and broadens until it leaves the picture plane to the right. This unusual but strikingly successful device leaves the group of peasants in the foreground in shadow, so they are painted in half-tones. They are not lost in the shadows however, but by subordinating them to natural elements within Ruysdael's scheme, he places mankind in proper relationship to his natural surroundings. In fact, the landscape we see - and the Dutch countryside that Ruysdael knew - is largely man-made, but Ruysdael allows it to speak to us directly, without encouraging man to interpret. Ruysdael's early landscapes have an overriding sense of movement in them, always uni-directional, and usually, as here, from left to right. Not only does the sunlight light the picture from the left to right, but the entire composition moves the same way, emphasized by the isolated leafless shrub to the right which leans to the right, as do the trunks of the centre willow and the larger tree which acts as a repoussoir, anchoring the left of the composition.υ2 The sky follows suit, with the darker grey of a line squall receding from us in the center, implying a direction of travel from left to right. In fact, if this is a dune landscape, then the dunes rise to the left and the west as they seem to, with the flat polder landscape to the right, and the prevailing westerly wind brings rain-laden clouds from the North Sea to the left. In this regard, this work accurately prefigures the work of Salomon van Ruysdael's nephew, Jacob, who was to paint similar scenes at the edge of the dunes twenty years later. 1. He was originally called Salomon de Gooyer after the region.
2. See P.C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exhibition catalogue, Boston 1987, p. 466-67, cat. no. 90.