Salomon van Ruysdael

Private Collection, Great Britain;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Christie's, July 10, 1987, lot 44, unsold; 
With Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York;
From whom acquired by the present collector, New York, in 1988.

W. Liedtke, "Pentimenti in Our Pictures of Salomon van Ruysdael and of Jan van Goyen," in Shop Talk.  Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge, Mass. 1995, p. 155 and reproduced, p. 355, fig. 3;
W. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New Haven and London 2007, vol. 2, pp. 812-14, under cat. no. 187, reproduced p. 812, fig. 234.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This large panel is uncradled. It is flat and the panel join is unbroken. The paint layer has recently been cleaned and we recommend that the picture be hung as is. The paint layer is in lovely condition. There is a little retouching in the blue in the center sky, however in the lower sky and in the landscape and foreground, the condition is excellent and very little, if any restoration has been added. We are happy to recommend the condition of this picture.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Between the years 1644 and 1664, Ruysdael painted seven landscapes with the city of Alkmaar, six of which are recorded by Stechow in his 1975 monograph of the artist.¹  The present work, which appears to be the earliest and one of the most accurate views of the city, was not known to him.  It appeared on the art market in 1987 and has since been universally accepted as an autograph work.  However, the two figures and the basket in the foreground lower left, visible in the 1987 catalogue illustration, proved to be nineteenth century additions and have since been removed.

The city of Alkmaar is only about 35 kilometers from Haarlem, and Ruysdael is known to have been there in 1644, as his brother, Pieter de Goyer, was buried in the Grote Kerk (Sint Laurenskerk) on January 28, 1644.  Ruysdael shows the city from the north, the church dominating all the other buildings.²  Its choir is to the left and the nave to the right, while the long northern transept stretches out toward the viewer.  Immediately to the right of the transept is an odd bulbous shape, which reveals itself as a family of storks nesting in the bell tower of a now-destroyed monastery.  The orientation here is the same as the Dublin painting of Alkmaar with the Grote Kerk,Winter (Stechow 21), dated 1647.³   The Dublin picture at first looks quite different from A View of Alkmaar with the Sint Laurenskerk from the North because of the change in season.  The presence of the frozen river with its crowds of skaters and the large sleds in the foreground masks the fact that the basic geography is the same - even the imaginary course of the river in the foreground. However, the View of the Town of Alkmaar in the Metropolitan Museum (Stechow 401) is far closer in feeling. There Ruysdael shows the church from the west, so that we see the nave of the church coming toward us.  In the foreground is a similar lazy river landscape, though with a ferryboat replacing the fishermen. 

A View of Alkmaar with the Sint Laurenskerk from the North is a characteristic of Ruysdael's paintings of the mid-1640s.  Here he has left behind his tonal phase, when he was strongly under the influence of Jan van Goyen, and has moved to a more majestic depiction of the Dutch landscape.  His palette is richer and more varied, with deeper blues in the sky and touches of local colour in the foreground figures and the sails.  Ruysdael uses a traditional compositional device to create a sense of spatial recession:  the long thin triangle of shore that moves from middle ground to the distant right.  This is energized by the more dramatic falling line of the tree tops, anchored at the center by the large mass of the church, which dwarfs the surrounding buildings.   He peoples the foreground with fishermen and their baskets and nets and scatters the smaller silhouettes of waterfowl among them.  The present work is a combination of historical accuracy and imagination that vividly evokes the landscape and mood of seventeenth century Holland. 

1  W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, eine Einfuhrung in seine Kunst, 2nd (revised) edition, Berlin 1975, cat. no. 9, 1656, London art market 1957; cat. no. 21, 1647, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; cat. no. 401, datable to mid-1650s, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; cat. no.523B, 1651, Longleat, The Marquis of Bath;  cat. no. 535, 1664, New York, Private Collection; cat. no. 545, Rheden, F. H. Fentener van Vlissingen.
2  See W. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New Haven and London 2007, vol. 2, pp. 812-14, under cat. no. 187, for a discussion of the orientation of the church and the geography of the city.
3  The signature and date are not recorded by Stechow but were revealed in cleaning.  See H. Potterton, Dutch Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Painting in the National Gallery of Ireland.  A Complete Catalogue, Dublin 1986, p. 138, cat. no. 27.