Landscape with a Windmill
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| Landscape with a Windmill |
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| Jacob van Ruisdael , 1648 |
| oil on wood |
| 49.5 × 68.5 cm |
| Cleveland Museum of Art , Cleveland , Ohio , USA |
Landscape with a Windmill is the title of a painting by Jacob van Ruisdael from 1646. The artist's early work shows a post windmill in the foreground, behind it a meadow landscape and on the horizon the dunes of the North Sea coast near Haarlem, the painter's hometown. The painting is in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio.
description
The painting is done in the painting technique oil on wood and has the dimensions 49.5 × 68.5 cm. The painter's signature and date are lower right: JvR 1646 .
The main object is a post windmill that rises behind a body of water in the foreground of the picture. It is shown in a slightly lower view, surrounded by trees and bushes of a garden with a picket fence and a representative entrance gate. To the right of the mill is a house with a smoking chimney. In the left half of the picture, a wide meadow landscape opens up with two hikers who are walking past the mill property on the way. On the meadow behind them, lengths of cloth are laid out for bleaching. To the left and in the background are tree-lined farmhouses. In the far background, on the deep horizon, dunes of white sand can be seen. The area around Haarlem is probably shown . The mill stands out from the cloudy sky like a silhouette, giving it a slightly dramatic effect. There is no wind, as the plume of smoke above the chimney shows. The light of the evening sun illuminates the otherwise peaceful scene.
History and interpretation
This picture from 1646 is one of the artist's early works and its composition is still based on the style of his uncle and teacher Salomon van Ruysdael . There are four drawings by Ruisdael, probably from his sketchbook, in the Dresden picture gallery today , which repeat this motif. The composition includes a “near form” on the edge of the picture and an opposite distant view. This principle appears again and again in Ruisdael's landscapes. However, he differs from his uncle Salomon and his contemporaries early on in the depiction of the vegetation. If they have more or less stylized and simplified plants using the same brushwork over and over again, Jacob van Ruisdael works exactly with the plant representation. His trees and bushes are painted from nature, the species with their foliage and growth forms can be clearly distinguished. Another demarcation is his penchant for monumentality, here it is the elevation of the windmill, a motif that Ruisdael has repeatedly taken up to the end and is always a main subject of the picture.
Perhaps the artist saw in the windmill a symbol of the power of God, which shows itself in the dependence of man in his well-being and wealth on the forces of nature and thus on God. The engineering that the windmill had produced, be it for grinding grain, for draining water or for gaining pastureland in polder farming, brought people secure living conditions and wealth. In 1625 in Rotterdam, the Dutch printer and engraver Zacharias Heyns published prints with the title Emblemata in the emblematic books of religious edification literature of that time . There windmills appear as a symbol for the motto Spriritus vivificat. De letter doot maer den Geeſt maect levendich . (The letter kills, the spirit gives life). The saying comes from the Bible ( Second Corinthians , chapter 3, verse 6).
Provenance and exhibitions
According to the provenance given in the literature , the owners Francis, Frederick and Herbert Cook were the owners of the Cook Collection . This collection was auctioned on November 25, 1966 at Christie's auction house in London. At that time the picture was still regarded as the successor to Ruisdael. It went to the art dealer F. Kleinberger & Co, New York. In 1967 it was bought by the Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund , which loaned it to the Cleveland Museum of Art .
Exhibitions
- 1946: Dutch and Flemish paintings of the seventeenth century from the Cook Collection. August to September, at the Usher Art Gallery in Lincoln
- 1964–1966: Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester
- 2011: Jacob van Ruisdael landscapes in the Cleveland Museum of Art
literature
- Seymour Slive: Jacob Van Ruisdael. A Complete Catalog of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. Yale University Press, New Haven 2001, ISBN 0-300-08972-4 , p. 145, ( books.google.de ).
- Seymour Slive: Jacob Van Ruisdael. Windmills and Water Mills. Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2011, ISBN 978-1-60606-055-1 , p. 10, ( books.google.com ).
Web links
- Landscape with a Windmill, 1646 on clevelandart.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ J. Giltaij: De tekeningen van Jacob van Ruisdael. In: Oud Holland. - Quarterly for Dutch Art History. Vol. 94, 1980, pp. 162 ff. ISSN 1875-0176 , brillonline.com , doi: 10.1163 / 187501780X00238 .
- ^ Nils Büttner: In: Martina Sitt (ed.): Jacob von Ruisdael - The revolution of the landscape. Waanders / Hamburger Kunsthalle, Zwolle / Hamburg 2002, ISBN 90-400-9606-6 , p. 72.
- ^ Hans Kauffmann: Jacob van Ruisdael: The mill of Wijk near Duurstede, commemorative publication for Otto von Simson on his 65th birthday. Grisebach and Renger, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 379 ff.
- ^ Seymour Slive: Jacob van Ruisdael - Master of Landscape. Royal Academy of Arts, in the USA and Canada by Yale University Press, London / New Haven 2005, ISBN 1-903973-24-4 , p. 124.
- ^ SC Kaines Smith: Dutch and Flemish paintings of the seventeenth century from the Cook Collection [1946]. Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln 1946, OCLC 920911105 .
- ↑ Cleveland Museum of Art exhibits its four Jacob van Ruisdael landscapes together for the first time in decades. cleveland.com, accessed February 24, 2016 .