Mountainous Landscape
Jacob van Ruisdael·1670
Historical Context
Mountainous Landscape, painted around 1670 and now in the Hermitage, belongs to van Ruisdael's extended series of imaginary Scandinavian-type compositions — dramatic highland terrain he constructed from studio invention rather than direct observation. The flat Dutch Republic offered no mountains, and the appetite among Dutch collectors for dramatic elevated scenery was met by van Ruisdael and a handful of contemporaries who constructed convincing northern wildernesses from borrowed sources, principally Allaert van Everdingen's Norwegian landscapes. These fictional mountainscapes allowed van Ruisdael to explore themes of natural sublimity — the overwhelming grandeur of landscape before which human beings feel small and temporary — that the flat Dutch panorama denied him. The Hermitage's holdings of this type are particularly strong, reflecting the Russian imperial taste for precisely this kind of dramatic landscape.
Technical Analysis
The composition builds upward from a darkened foreground through rocky middle ground to a clouded sky, creating a sense of geological grandeur. Van Ruisdael's technique renders the rock formations and turbulent clouds with energetic brushwork that conveys the dynamic forces of nature.
Look Closer
- ◆The mountain peaks are imaginary — Van Ruisdael constructed Nordic highlands he never visited from second-hand visual sources.
- ◆A torrent descends the mountain face in cascading stages — each fall catching light at its crest before plunging into shadow.
- ◆A ruined tower on the cliff face adds the third element in Van Ruisdael's recurring triad: water, rock, ruin — all three signs of time's passage.
- ◆Pine trees in the foreground are bent by the wind that Van Ruisdael implied in their posture despite painting still trunks.
- ◆The sky above the mountains is dramatically lit — clouds parting to send a shaft of illumination across the nearest peak.
