Lot 1046 Dα

The present painting is a reversed version of the painting “Willows in a River,” also from 1632, in the collection of the Hamburg Kunsthalle (33,5 x 50,5 cm). With the Hamburg painting, which also includes a floating barrel, Stechow sees Ruysdael beginning a new phase. Grey-green becomes the dominant tone, even though the somewhat blue heaven enlivens the vaporous grey of the clouds. According to Stechow, Ruysdael's mastery in the rendition of water reflections emerges in the Hamburg version for the first time (p. 19). In fact, probably no other painter from his circle captured so effectively the calm and flowing fusion of shore and water, as can be observed in both the present and the Hamburg painting. In the 1630s Ruysdael varied his compositional formula with the diagonal river landscape, the low horizon, the economical employment of staffage and calm water in ever new ways.