Salomon van Ruysdael

Gilbert Colville, Esq., Lullington Hall, Burton-on-Trent;
By whom sold, London, Christie's, 19 December 1947, lot 48, for £1,417/10s to Slatter;
With Eugene Slatter Gallery, London, 1948;
Edwin Cohen, 1952-after 1953;
With Alfred Brod Gallery, 1956;
Private collection;
Post-auction sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2000, lot 61, where purchase by the present collector.  

London, Eugene Slatter Gallery, 1948 Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, 5 May-10 July 1948, reproduced in the catalogue, plate 2;
London, Royal Academy, Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, Winter Exhibition, 1952-1953, no. 264;
London, Alfred Brod Gallery, Paintings by old masters, 17 October -24 November 1956, no. 28.

Eugene Slatter Gallery, 1948 Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, exhibition catalogue, London 1948, reproduced plate 2;
London, Royal Academy, Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, Winter Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, London 1952, p. 54, cat. no. 264;
Alfred Brod Gallery, Paintings by old masters, exhibition catalogue, London 1956, cat. no. 28 (titled Shipping at the Mouth of the Dort and noted "sold during the printing of the catalogue");
W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, revised ed., Berlin 1975, p. 75, cat. no. 39B.

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 work is painted on a single piece of oak, which is flat and unreinforced on the reverse. The paint layer is stable and in remarkably good condition. The painting is clean. There are a few tiny retouches in the water in the lower center, and some isolated spots above the ships in the sky.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In the first half of his career Salomon van Ruysdael was primarily a painter of tonal landscapes, much in the style of Jan van Goyen.  However, in about 1640, he began to compose what came to be called more classicizing landscapes, consisting of more centralized compositions, brighter colors and a new emphasis on cloud-filled skies.  At the same time he also began to paint marines.  The name may suggest stormy seascapes, but in fact Ruysdael’s marines are generally restricted to calm, inland waters.  A few sailboats are set against a high sky, often at dawn or dusk, and in the far distance is a town.  In the mid-1650s, Ruysdael further refined this genre, painting a group of small panels in upright rather than horizontal format.  The result was a still greater emphasis on the sky, which now took up more than three-quarters of the composition, and the billowing clouds, which provided the dramatic element in an otherwise peaceful scene.  Today we know of about a dozen panels of roughly the same dimensions as this one and with similar compositions.  In the present work the light and a stiff breeze come from the left, the latter pushing the sailboats to the right edge of the picture and creating ripples on the surface of the water.  The clouds range from bright white to a more threatening grey and partially block the sun.

Everything is carefully drawn:  Ruysdael sets the semi-transparent darkened sails against sunlit clouds, outlining the fabric with thin dark lines.  He puts a red flag with his monogram at the top of the mast and paints in a few birds to create a sense of depth.  But despite the apparent realism of the setting, it is the composition itself that is of primary importance.  The clouds in the painting, a combination of cumulus and stratus, could never exist in real life.¹  As Peter Sutton writes, describing another picture from this group:

 “The way in which the bands of light are distributed across the water also attests to the artist’s thoughtful approach to composition.  The latter was not merely a matter of schematized draftsmanship and the arrangement of forms, rather it involved a subtle formal dialogue between the terrestrial and celestial zones of the picture and a masterful command of a very limited range of hues of grey, white, and blue on an actively expressive buff and pink ground.” ²

 

1.  J. Walsh, “Skies and Reality in Dutch Landscape,” in D. Freedberg and J. de Vries, eds., Art in History, History in Art:  Studies in seventeenth century Dutch culture¸Santa Monica 1991, p. 100;
2.  P.C. Sutton, The Golden Ages of Dutch Landscape Painting¸ exhibition catalogue, Madrid 1994, p. 218.