Date: Fri 31-Jul-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Speed

Full Text:

Speed Art Museum Acquired Landmark Painting By Jacob Van Ruisdael

LOUISVILLE, KY. -- A significant work by the most important Dutch landscape

painter of the Seventeenth Century is the newest addition to the permanent

collection of The Speed Art Museum.

The painting, "Landscape with Cottages and a Blasted Tree" by Jacob van

Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/9-1682) will command a prominent spot in the museum's

already important collection of Dutch work.

"Ruisdael's landscape painting is generally thought to mark a defining moment

in the history of Western art," says chief curator Ruth Cloudman. "Ruisdael

brought a new emotional expressiveness to the depiction of landscape, and

ushered in the classic phase of Dutch landscape painting."

The addition of "Landscape with Cottages and a Blasted Tree" to the collection

also demonstrates the Speed's growing stature among the world's museum.

"There are very few museums that can add a Ruisdael to their collection," says

museum director Peter Morrin. "In adding a Ruisdael, we join a select group of

museums around the world," which includes the National Gallery of Art in

London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

and the Art Institute of Chicago.

"The museum's new ability to add important works of art to the collection will

enhance our stature with other museums internationally and will aid in our

ability to obtain important loans and exhibitions," Morrin noted. The Speed's

ability to acquire such a significant work is due in part to a bequest by

Alice Speed Stoll. The granddaughter of James Breckinridge Speed, for whom the

museum is named, Stoll left the museum more than $50 million in 1996. She was

a member of the museum's board of governors for 30 years and provided key

leadership as a vice president.

The artist Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael was born in the Dutch town of Haarlem

in 1628 or 1629. Although little is known about his life, he is believed to

have studied painting with his father, Isaack van Ruisdael (1599-1677), or his

uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/3-70), who spelled his name differently than

his nephew.

Jacob's earliest paintings, which date from 1646, show Dutch landscape. In

1650, he made a trip east to the Dutch-German border, where he found a number

of new subjects to paint, including water mills and half-timbered houses.

Around 1656, Ruisdael moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands' most populous city

and largest art market, where he lived until his death. Ruisdael painted

almost every type of landscape favored by the Dutch, including rivers, canals,

mountains, woodlands, panoramas, winter scenes, waterfalls and windmills, city

views, Scandinavian views, beaches and seascapes. No other Dutch painter

matched his range.

Ruisdael's influence, however, extended far beyond Seventeenth Century Dutch

painting. His work is considered the foundation of the English school of

landscape painting because of its pivotal influence on the landscapes of

Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. Likewise, the French Barbizon painters

found inspiration for their naturalistic approach to landscape in Ruisdael's

work.

Ruisdael painted "Landscape with Cottages and a Blasted Tree" in 1653. It

shows the monumental composition and rich color that marked the artist's work

at a pivotal moment in his career and that would come to typify what is now

known as the classic phase of Dutch landscape painting.

The scene in the Speed's painting is almost an anthology of Ruisdael's

favorite motifs from the early 1650s: a dead willow in the foreground, a

rushing stream with waterfall, and a half-timbered cottage. Ruisdael was

unsurpassed in the botanical accuracy of his depictions of trees and

vegetation, shown in minute detail in the Speed's piece. The rushing stream

and waterfall in the foreground show Ruisdael's celebrated ability to capture

the effervescent motion of water.

Perhaps his greatest expressive motifs, however, are his trees, such as a dead

willow encircled by a living vine. This image, which Ruisdael used repeatedly

during the 1650s, offers an eloquent and widely understood expression of the

transience of life and the endless cycle of birth, decay, death and renewal,

the underlying theme of the Speed's painting. All of these elements are

unified by Ruisdael's use of light and shadow as sunlight breaks through the

clouds in a further display of the changeability of nature.

Ruisdael's "Landscape with Cottages and a Blasted Tree" brings the grandeur of

Seventeenth Century Dutch landscape painting to the Speed's collection and

make a fitting counterpoint to the museum's fine "Portrait of a Woman" by

Rembrandt.

Recently renovated, The Speed Art Museum is Kentucky's oldest and largest art

museum. With collections spanning 6,000 years, major works include Rembrandt,

Rubens, Monet, modern American, African and Native American art.

Museum hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 10:30 am-4 pm; Thursday, 10:30

am-8 pm; Saturday, 10:30 am-5 pm; and Sunday, 12-5 pm. The museum is at 2035

South Third Street. For information, call 502/634-2700.