Lot 1047 Dα

Salomon van Ruysdael and Jan van Goyen belonged to the group of young Haarlem artists who were to revolutionise Netherlandish landscape painting in the 1620s. They aimed to depict the changing effects of light, wind and water, phenomena of nature and atmospheres of the landscape in painting. Ruysdael invented a form of river landscape exemplary of this new kind of painting in the early 1630s. The present work was probably painted in the 1640s and follows the compositional scheme developed in the preceding decade. A large portion of the work is dominated by water, giving the viewer the feeling of floating on the painted river. The diagonally placed trees create depth, and the group of houses with washer women in boats forms the centre of the composition, simultaneously enlivening it with figures. However, the main focus is clearly placed on the river and sky, with thick clouds gathering in the heavens and the river bank reflecting in the water.