Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 4, 1912.djvu/16

 2 JACOB VAN RUISDAEL SECT. one can even now trace without difficulty the places from which Ruisdael must have made the studies for his pictures. There seems no doubt that Ruisdael must at least have penetrated into the outlying hill-regions of Germany, the Teutoburger Wald, or the well-watered valleys, not in his day defaced by factories and smelting-works, of Mark and Berg. The traveller who carries reproductions of Ruisdael's pictures with him to these districts will find there many of the painter's subjects. Only one must try to imagine the country as it was when it had fewer inhabitants and more woods, and when the streams were not embanked ; and one must remember that Ruisdael usually took up his point of view rather near to the composition which he meant to paint, so that the hills seem higher and the streams wider than they really are. This tendency to exaggerate the proportions, which can be demonstrated in such cases as that of Bentheim, where the scenes may be identified, was characteristic of the period, and may be noticed in other painters. It arose partly from a desire to increase the romantic charm of his subjects for the benefit of the admirers of his pictures who themselves lived in a flat country, and partly, too, from his liking for the very popular northern landscapes by Allaert van Everdingen, who knew the mountains of Scandinavia from personal observation, and who exercised an unmistakable influence upon his younger countryman. It appears that these mountain scenes were at that time much more sought after than the homely subjects from the painter's own country, which are valued most highly by our generation. Yet Ruisdael's mountain subjects have their distinctive charm and picturesque qualities. They need only be compared with similar works by Van Everdingen, his predecessor, or by Van Kessel, his imitator, for this to become apparent. Ruisdael is superior to these painters in every respect, in the treatment of the foaming water, the foreground, and the superb giants of the forest, in poetic feeling, in romantic association, and in richness of invention, and his works of this kind, although seldom if ever dated, are rightly assigned to the period of his maturity, from about the year 1660 onwards. The genuinely Dutch scenes which have come down to us from Ruisdael's hand consist of distant views, panoramic in style, from the dunes near Haarlem, coast-scenes and sea-pieces, views of town-streets, winter scenes, and, finally, the large group of wood and meadow landscapes, with or without buildings, streams, figures, and animals. As Ruisdael was not in any special sense a figure- or animal-painter, the figures and animals, if they assume any prominence, are usually inserted by another hand in the earlier Haarlem period by N. Berchem, Ph. Wouwerman, or A. van Ostade, and in the later Amsterdam period by Adriaen van de Velde or Johannes Lingelbach. But the most attractive and most harmonious pictures are those in which Ruisdael himself painted modest figures. No other painter understood as he did what accorded best with the sentiment of the landscape. The pictures of wood and meadow are derived from the sandy country of Holland, from the Gooiland lying to the east of Amster- dam, and also from the provinces of Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel. In those districts were the forest giants with lofty trunks, the workshops and water-mills, as well as the hills and the marshy pools in woods. The