Jacob van Ruisdael

Haarlem 1628 - Amsterdam 1682

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Landscape with cornfields and a thatched barn.

Oil on Panel, 28 x 34.9 cm
Signed lower right

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Provenance

Private Collection, Germany.

Additionnal Information

This hitherto unknown early landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael is a recent discovery. It was painted circa 1647–48, one of the earliest of his paintings to combine his favoured motifs of cornfields and oaks. His first dated work in which he did this is an etching of 1648 (fig. 1). Several of his other early works however are set where the dunes sheltering his native Haarlem from the sea meet the flatter country inland, at the point where freshwater streams flow from the base of the sand. The motif of a wagon wheel resting on the bank in the right foreground occurs in another early Ruisdael of oaks, corn and a farm building, the landscape dated 1647 formerly at Aske Hall. A similar hump-backed thatched barn to the one seen to the left occurs in another landscape of 1647 known from photographs.