The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 29, 2022

Low Waterfall in a Wooded Landscape with a Dead Beech Tree

c. 1660–70

Jacob van Ruisdael

(Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

Netherlands, 17th century

Oil on canvas

Framed: 123 x 157 x 9.5 cm (48 7/16 x 61 13/16 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 99.2 x 131 cm (39 1/16 x 51 9/16 in.)

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1967.63

Location

213 Dutch Painting

Description

Jutting from a dune in the foreground, the massive silvery trunk of a dead tree leads the eye across a waterfall and toward a distant sunlit field where travelers and a dog traverse a sandy path. Partly masked by trees, a ruined building is turned gold by the sun. In Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes, dead trees, waterfalls, and ruined buildings were visual expressions of the passage of time. Ruisdael devoted equal attention to the cloud-filled skies looming above the land, creating dramatic patterns of light and shadow and revealing the unseen movements of the wind.

Inscriptions

Inscription

Signed lower left: "JvRuisdael {JvR in monogram]"

Provenance
Freiherren von Ketteler (first at Schloss Harkotten near Warendorf, probably by mid-eighteenth century;
later at Schloss Ehringerfeld near Buren, Westphalia, 1904);
J. J. van Leeuwen Boomkamp, Naarden, Holland, 1929;
(sale: Sotheby’s London, November 30, 1966, no. 21; to Legatt);
[Frederick Mont, New York], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
Citations
Hofstede de Groot, C. P. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. London, United Kingdom: Macmillan and Co, 1908. Reproduced: vol. 4, no. 220
Rosenberg, Jakob. Jacob van Ruisdael. Berlin, Germany: B. Cassirer, 1928. Reproduced: p. 81, no. 140
Simon, Kurt Erich. Jacob van Ruisdael; eine Darstellung seiner Entwicklung. Berlin, Germany: Würfel Verlag, 1930. Reproduced: p. 74
"Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (1967): 302-46. Mentioned: cat. no. 65, p. 343, Reproduced: p. 314 www.jstor.org
Stechow, Wolfgana. "Ruisdael in the Cleveland Museum." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LV, no.10 (October, 1968): 250-261. Reproduced: p. 255, fig. 7; Mentioned: p. 254
"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums." The Art Quarterly XXXI, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 205-232. Reproduced: p. 215
Kokuritsu Seiyō Bijutsukan. Masterpieces of World Art from American Museums from Ancient Egyptian to Contemporary Art. Tokyo: National Museum of Western Art, 1976. Reproduced: cat. no. 34
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 161 archive.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982. Reproduced: p. 268; Mentioned: p. 269
Walford, E. John. Jacob Van Ruisdael and the Perception of Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. Reproduced: p. 118
Gibson, Walter S. Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Reproduced: pl. 14
Slive, Seymour. Jacob Van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Reproduced: p. 173, fig. 169; Mentioned: p. 172-173
Kuretsky, Susan Donahue, Walter S. Gibson, Catherine Levesque, Erik P. Löffler, Lynn Federle Orr, and Arthur K. Wheelock. Time and Transformation In Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005. Reproduced: p. 171, fig. 32
Exhibition history

Düsseldorf, Junsthistorische ausstellung, (1904).

Rotterdam, Museum Boymans, (1929-30).

Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967).

Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art (July 10-September 2, 1973).

Masterpieces of World Art from American Museums. National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (organizer) (September 11-October 17, 1976); Kyoto National Museum (November 2-December 5, 1976).

Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982).

Time and Transformation in seventeenth-century Dutch Art. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY (organizer) (April 19-June 15, 2005); John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL (August 20-October 30, 2005); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (January 15-March 26, 2006).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1967.63