Jacob van Ruisdael

Jacob van Ruisdael is a Dutch painter and engraver of the Golden Age, master landscape painter whose dramatic and contemplative work elevates landscape to the rank of major genre of Western painting. Active in Haarlem then Amsterdam, he develops a monumental style characterized by tormented skies, bold compositions and a romantic vision of nature that transcends the descriptive realism of his predecessors. His landscapes of dark forests, windmills beaten by winds and tumultuous waterfalls create an atmosphere of sublime melancholy that charges nature with spiritual and philosophical meanings. Innovator in the treatment of the Dutch sky, his dramatic clouds occupying two-thirds of his canvases establish a model for romantic landscape that influences Constable, Friedrich and all modern landscape painting. His Jewish Cemetery, meditation on vanity and the passage of time, testifies to an intellectual depth that makes landscape a vehicle for metaphysical reflection announcing romanticism.