Lot 1055 Dα

In 1644, Ruisdael travelled to the south-east coast of Norway and the area around Gothenburg in western Sweden. Although he stayed in the region for less than a year and returned to Haarlem in 1645 to open his workshop, this period had a lasting influence on his work and served as the basis for numerous recurring elements in his compositions, including mountain landscapes, fir and spruce trees, rushing waterfalls, log cabins and views of the rocky coast. In his home town of Haarlem, Ruisdael was also able to study the works of Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675) in detail. He had also travelled to Scandinavia to study nature and specialised in the depiction of so-called "Scandinavian landscapes".
In this painting from the 1670s, Ruisdael used the popular motifs of his Scandinavian views. In addition to a rushing stream breaking over rocks, tall pine trees and an expansive sky, the painter has also included a light wooden bridge in the background, over which two figures are crossing the turbulent water. Such a bridge is frequently found in Ruisdael's waterfall paintings from this period, for example in a "Waterfall with a Wooden Bridge" in Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlung (inv. no. 1497).
Seymour Slive described the present painting in his 2001 catalogue raisonné on the basis of an old black and white photograph (no. 187) and confirmed it as a work by Ruisdael in 2015 on the basis of a colour photograph.