Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

Baron Otto Thott (1703–1785), Gavnø Castle, Denmark, until 1785;

His heir, Baron Holger Reedtz-Thott, Gavnø; 

By descent at Gavnø to Baron Axel Reedtz-Thott, Gavnø;

By whose Executors sold, London, Christie's, 2 July 1976, lot 34, for £6,000;

Where acquired by Mr and Mrs Charles H. Noble, Jr, London;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 1 December 1978, lot 11, for £9,500 to Dietrich;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 10 December 1993, lot 28, unsold (estimate £70,000–100,000);

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 19 May 1994, lot 111, for $60,000;

Where acquired for the present collection.

C.A. Lorentzen, Inventory, 1785, valued at 50 Rijsdaler;

J. Lange, Baroniet Gavnø Malerisamling, 1876, no. 72 (as a good old copy);

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. IV, London 1912, p. 76, no. 224a;

K. Madsen and O. Andrup, Gavnø Catalogue, 1914, no. 153;

K. Madsen, ‘Malerisamling paa Gavnø’, in Kunstmuseets Åarskrift, 4, 1917, pp. 62–63, reproduced;

J. Rosenberg, Jacob van Ruisdael, Berlin 1928, p. 82, no. 163;

S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings, New Haven and London 2001, p. 194, no. 191, reproduced (as datable to the 1660s).

Copenhagen, Kunstforeningen, October 1891, no. 190;

Gavnø, Udvalgte nederlandske malerier, 1966, p. 6;

Lund, Sweden, Konsthall, 17th Century in the Netherlands: Masterpieces from Gavnø Castle, 1967, no. 45.

In the 1660s and later, Ruisdael painted a large number of mountainous landscapes with waterfalls that were clearly inspired by Allaert van Everdingen's Scandinavian landscapes. He also however painted landscapes with oak woods and streams that are based on more tranquil countryside that he had seen on a trip to the Eastern Netherlands and the German border in the early 1650s. This painting is a good example of such works: the sandy margin of the stream in the foreground is reminiscent of the light soil and open woodland of the Dutch province of Overijssel and the bordering German territory near Bentheim. The prominent damaged oak to the left with its dead upper branches, its roots perhaps weakened by the sodden soil and the beeches felled by the wind are motifs often found in his work from this period. Seymour Slive dates this work to the 1660s.

From around a hundred years or less after it was painted until 1976 this Ruisdael formed part of one of the largest and most important private collections in Denmark. The Gavnø Estate was acquired in 1735 by Count Otto Thott, later Minister of Finance for Denmark, and his wife, Birgitte-Charlotte Kruse. They had the castle at Gavnø restored and rebuilt in 1755, partly to house the collection of paintings that Count Thott had been assembling since his youth. At his death in 1785 the collection was the largest in Denmark, numbering over 3,000 items, not all of them at Gavnø. The painter C.A. Lorentzen made an inventory of the 2,166 paintings at Gavnø and Lindersvold in 1785 that included this picture, which remained at Gavnø until it was one of some thirty Old Masters, predominantly Dutch and Flemish 17th-century pictures, sold from the collection in 1976.