Paysage Norvégien
Jacob van Ruisdael·1655
Historical Context
Norwegian Landscape (Paysage Norvégien), one of Ruisdael's inventive northern landscape compositions, combines the dramatic scenery of waterfalls and rocky terrain with the atmospheric sky that was his constant preoccupation. Working from drawings, from memory, and from the work of other painters who had traveled further north, he constructed a convincing image of wild northern nature that gave Dutch collectors access to a landscape type they could not experience in their own flat country. The work demonstrates the imaginative freedom within technical accuracy that distinguished the best Dutch landscape painting: observed truth at the service of pictorial ambition.
Technical Analysis
The dramatic cascade and dark evergreen forests create an atmosphere of northern sublimity. Ruisdael's rendering of rushing water and mountainous terrain conveys the power of untamed nature.
