Landscape with a Windmill
Sul dipinto
Landscape with a Windmill is an oil-on-panel painting executed by the Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael in 1646, early in his career. It is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio. It had initially been loaned to them by the Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt fund, who had bought it in 1967 from Kunsthandlung F. Kleinberger & Co, a New York art dealer, who had in turn bought it at the auction of the Cook collection at Christie's in London on 25 November 1966.
Continua a leggere
It shows a windmill and fields in the foreground, with the North Sea sand dunes near the painter's birthplace of Haarlem in the background. It is signed and dated JvR 1646. The work shows that at this date Jacob was still strongly influenced by the style of his uncle and teacher Salomon van Ruysdael. Four preparatory drawings for the work are now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. He returned to similar compositions with a landmark in the left or right hand corner of the foreground and a landscape in the background throughout his career, such as in Evening Landscape: A Windmill by a Stream.
Con le parole del museo
Even this early work by Jacob van Ruisdael—painted while he was still a teenager—shows his unique approach to landscape that made the simplest motifs seem grand and heroic. Dark forms are massed in the foreground, creating a stark contrast to the expansive, sunlit plain at left.
