River Landscape with a View of Naarden
Salomon van Ruysdael·1642
Historical Context
Salomon van Ruysdael's 1642 River Landscape with a View of Naarden depicts the fortified town on the Gooi heath that was one of the secondary Dutch landscape destinations he painted alongside the more commonly depicted Haarlem and Dordrecht. Ruysdael was a pioneer of the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting in the 1630s-40s, developing a radically simplified palette of grey-greens, ochres, and blues that emphasized atmospheric unity over local color. His influence on his nephew Jacob van Ruisdael (who added a 'd' to the family name) was fundamental, and Salomon's mature river landscapes established the compositional and atmospheric vocabulary that Jacob would develop into his grander, more dramatic visions.
Technical Analysis
Van Ruysdael's oil on panel achieves remarkable atmospheric unity through a restricted tonal palette of grays, greens, and silvery blues, with the low horizon and expansive sky creating the characteristic Dutch sense of boundless space.
Provenance
Mary Hooper Warner, Boston, Mass. [born 1879 and died 1972 at the age of 93, according to obituary in the New York Times, October 14, 1972]; by descent to her son Roger Sherman Warner, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., and Washington. D.C, [this information comes from the purchase documents of the Brod Gallery, London, summarized in Nuveen description in curatorial file]. Brod Gallery, London, by 1980 [advertised in the Burlington Magazine, September 1980 as with the Brod Gallery]; sold to Nuveen, Chicago, 1986.
