A Marsh in a Forest at Dusk - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

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A Marsh in a Forest at Dusk

Ruisdael, Jacob Isaacksz van

Haarlem, the Netherlands, 16/08/1628-Amsterdam, 14/03/1682

Oil on canvas

77.7 x 92.2 cm

VRuisdael (lower right side, with the initials intertwined)

c. 1655

Mid-17th century

92/118

Acquired in 1992

Since the first decades of the nineteenth century when Jacob van Ruisdael began to acquire the reputation he has today as the greatest landscapist of the heroic age of Dutch painting, apart from the impact Allart van Everdingen's nordic views had upon his waterfall pictures, the search for influences in his work has not produced very much. To be sure, specialists have long recognised that astonishingly precocious Jacob incorporated aspects of Cornelis Vroom's tender mood and filigree-like foliage in some landscapes done not long after he picked up his brushes in the 1640s, and during the following decades he was inspired now and then by the massive fissured tree trunks, twisted roots and branches, and rampant growth in prints of forest scenes by and after Roelandt Savey. More recently, Ruisdael's occasional debt to the compositional schemes employed by Pieter Brueghel and his followers has been signalled. Additionally, during the course of the last few years a fresh examination of paintings that can be securely attributed to his father Isaack van Ruisdael strengthens the supposition that he started as his father's pupil, albeit there is no question that he quickly surpassed him. As for his uncle Salomon van Ruysdael, although it seems reasonable to assume the budding artist had close contact with him in Haarlem, a search for traces of it in his art provides precious little. Stechow rightly stresses: "One cannot speak of Salomon's direct influence on the early works of Jacob van Ruisdael; the very cautious suggestions by Rosenberg and Simon in their Ruisdael monographs would limit, rather than extend, this influence."

In brief, what Ruisdael took from his putative teachers remains moot, and although it can be shown that Allart van Everdingen introduced him to an important new theme and, upon occasion, he incorporated what he learned from a handful of other immediate more distant predecessors into his work, it cannot be claimed that any of them determined the fundamental direction of his art.

The purpose of this note is to add Rubens's name to the short list. The Flemish master's indisputable place on it is secured when Ruisdael's Marsh in a forest at Dusk, datable in the mid-1650s, is yuxtaposed to Schelte à Bolswert's engraving (in reverse) after Rubens Forest at dawn with a deer hunt. Ruisdael doubtlessly knew the print, but there is no reason to believe he ever saw Rubens's superb original, since 1990 a treasure of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The surprising similarities of Ruisdael's landscape to Rubens's invention as copied by the engraver have not been noted in the literature.

In Ruisdael's landscape the hidden source of the sunset's rosy light that dramatically illuminates the blue sky, ragged whitish-pink evening clouds, and edges of tree trunks and a stump finds a close parallel in the burst of light in the engraving after Rubens's forest scene, which has been interpreted by some authors as depicting the sun's effect at dawn and by others as evening. An equally compelling analogy is the arrangement of the two large twisted trees clawing at the high bank that serves as a repoussoir in each work. Turning to the trees in the center and towards the left in the pictures, we begin to find differences. Ruisdael's wind swept boughs do not exist in the Rubens. A more conspicuous change is Jacob's massing of an impenetrable wall-like clump of trees in the near middleground, while Rubens's landscape has a highly developed feeling for the spaciousness of the woods and offers numerous scattered distant vistas into it.

Ruisdael's relatively close view of an extremely dense wood with merely a single glimpse of the distant horizon helps place this picture in the mid-1650's. Only later in the decade and in the sixties does he tend to expand space in his woodland scenes and begin to depict forest interiors. Other significant differences are the emphasis Jacob places on the foreground marsh, his complete elimination of the pronounced ornamental character of Schelte à Bolswert print (in fact, the engraver managed to make the forest in his print more ornamental than the one offered by his model) and, not least, his rejection of Rubens's hunting scene. Animals and humankind play no role in Ruisdael's landscape. Unlike Rubens, he has made nature his sole subject. [Seymour Slive]

Selected bibliography

  • La Pintura Holandesa del Siglo de Oro : Franz Hals y la Escuela de Haarlem [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, 1992. pp.132-133, n° cat. 46.
  • Gállego, Julián. "Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoak eskuratutako antxinako artelanak, 1980-1992 = Adquisiciones de arte antíguo en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 1980-1992 [Folleto]", Guía de Exposiciones, n° 181. 1993. n° cat. 21. (Con el título Un pantano en un bosque en la oscuridad)
  • La pintura holandesa del siglo de oro : Franz Hals y la escuela de Haarlem [Cat. exp.]. Madrid ; Bilbao, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, 1994. pp. 132-133, n° cat. 46.
  • Castañer López, Xesqui. Pinturas y pintores flamencos, holandeses y alemanes en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Bilbao, Fundación Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa, 1995. pp. 252-253.
  • Slive, Seymour. "Jacob van Ruisdael's variation on a theme by Rubens at Bilbao", Houd Holland, Vol. 111, n° 3. 1997. pp. 187-190
  • Zugaza, Miguel ... [et al.]. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : maestros antiguos y modernos. Bilbao, Fundación Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa = Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa Fundazioa, 1999. p.18.
  • Slive, Seymour. Jacob van Ruisdael : a complete catalogue of his paintings, drawings and etchings. New Haven ; London, Yale University Press, 2001. pp. 258-260, n° cat. 320. (con el titulo Marsh in a Wood at Dusk).
  • Zugaza, Miguel ... [et al.]. Maestros antiguos y modernos en las colecciones del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2001. p. 62.
  • Northern nocturnes : nightscapes in the age of Rembrandt [Cat. exp.]. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, 2005. p. 84. N° cat. 39.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 65.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 65.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. p. 65.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2011. p. 65, n° cat. 45.
  • Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa : gida. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2012. p. 65, n° cat. 45.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. p. 65.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. p. 65.
  • 110 Urte 110 Artelan [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 120-123, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Ans 110 Oeuvres [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 120-123, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Años 110 Obras [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 120-123, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Years 110 Works [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 120-123, sin n° cat.
  • "”Frans Hals y la Escuela de Haarlem”", <i>EL SEMANAL</i>. (13/03/1994).