Landscape with a Blasted Tree near a House

Landscape with a Blasted Tree near a House of 1645, now at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, is one of Van Ruisdael's very earliest surviving works — painted when he was around sixteen or seventeen — and already exhibits his characteristic motif of the dead or blasted tree as a symbol of mortality embedded in landscape. The dead tree beside a humble cottage introduces an elegiac note into what might otherwise be a purely topographic subject, connecting the painting to the broader tradition of vanitas imagery that ran through Dutch Golden Age art from still life to landscape. The Fitzwilliam Museum's holding of this unusually early Van Ruisdael, within the context of Cambridge University's art-historical teaching collection, makes it one of the most studied early works in his career.

The dead tree rises prominently against the sky, its bare branches silhouetted and forming a jagged contrast with the rounded mass of living foliage to the right. The cottage is rendered with naturalistic simplicity. The sky is active, with passing cloud breaking the light across the foreground.