Hilly Landscape with a Broad Waterfall

Hilly Landscape with a Broad Waterfall, one of Ruisdael's imaginary Scandinavian landscapes, combines close observation of actual landscape elements with a compositional freedom that organized them into something more dramatically satisfying than any actual view. Ruisdael never traveled to Scandinavia but created a convincing imaginary north from elements observed in the hilly borderlands of Germany and the Netherlands. His waterfalls — energetic, loud, spatially complex — became one of the most imitated subjects in Dutch landscape painting, and his mastery of moving water, its transparency, its foam, and its reflections, was technically unmatched among his contemporaries.

The waterfall cascades through a rocky landscape with characteristic energy. Ruisdael's handling of rushing water and misty atmosphere demonstrates his mastery of movement and atmospheric effects in paint.