View of a Watermill

Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael (Haarlem 1628/29 - Amsterdam 1682)

He was the only son of the Mennonite framemaker, art dealer and landscape painter Isaack Jacobsz Ruisdael (1599-1677). As stated in Jacob’s will of 27 May 1667, he was born in Haarlem. A notarized document of 9 June 1661, in which he declares himself to be thirty-two years old, puts his birthdate at 1628 or 1629. Although there is no documentary evidence, it is likely that Jacob trained with his father and, possibly, with his uncle Salomon van Ruysdael (c. 1600/03-1670). Be that as it may, the refined landscapes of Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom (c. 1590/92-1661) had a far more profound impact on Jacob’s early work, the earliest dated examples of which are from 1646. According to the records of the Haarlem painters’ guild, Jacob was enrolled in 1648. Houbraken claimed that Jacob also practiced medicine. In fact, a ‘Jacobus Ruijsdael’ appears on a list of Amsterdam doctors in the Amsterdam Stadsarchief, stating that a medical degree was conferred on him at the university of Caen, northern France, on 15 October 1676. This, however, is unlikely to be the artist. Houbraken was probably correct when he wrote that Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) and Ruisdael were good friends. It is generally assumed they travelled together to Bentheim in Westphalia just across the border around 1650. It is likely that Ruisdael settled in Amsterdam circa 1655, when Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) became his pupil there, according to a notarized document of 8 July 1660. A Mennonite just like his father, Jacob had himself baptized on 17 June 1657 in Ankeveen, a village near Utrecht. At this time he was living in Amsterdam in a house called ‘In de Silvere Trompete’ on the Rokin from the Dam to the Kromme Elleboogsteeg. On 15 January 1659, Jacob became a citizen of Amsterdam. When the artist drew up his will in 1667, he was living on the Kalverstraat, but from 1670 he was a subtenant of the third house on the south side of the Dam, seen from the Rokin, living above the book and art shop ‘De Wackeren Hond’, owned by the publisher Hieronymus Sweerts (1629-1696). Members of the wealthy Amsterdam patrician family De Graeff were clients of Jacob, as is attested by various archival sources. The Arrival of Cornelis de Graeff and his Family at his Country Estate Soestdijk, in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (inv. no. NGI.287),³ which was painted in collaboration with Thomas de Keyser (1596-1667), for instance, was certainly one such commission. Although Ruisdael’s paintings were given modest valuations in the few inventories made during his lifetime, his financial situation seems to have been stable enough throughout his career for him to be able, for instance in 1678, to lend 400 guilders to the Amsterdam doctor Johannes Baptist van Lamsweerde (active 1677-78). In 1674, Jacob’s assets were estimated, for tax purposes, at 2,000 guilders. He died a lifelong bachelor in 1682 and was buried on 14 March in the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, the city to which he presumably had returned shortly before his death.

Ruisdael left an impressive oeuvre of some 800 paintings, around 140 drawings and a tiny corpus of 13 etchings. Dated works are rather unevenly distributed over his career, creating uncertainty over his precise development. His last five dated paintings are from the 1660s, but in every case the last digit is illegible. Ruisdael was, no doubt, the most versatile landscapist of the Dutch Golden Age. His oeuvre includes city- and seascapes, coastal and panoramic scenes, wooded and winter landscapes, grain fields, Scandinavian landscapes and landscape views centring on an array of motifs such as hills, mountains, bridges, ruined structures, water and wind mills, cemeteries, castles, cottages, sluices, torrents and waterfalls. Ruisdael frequently employed colleagues to add staffage to his landscape views, among them Berchem, Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), Gerrit Lundens (1622-1686), Adriaen van de Velde (1636-1672) and Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668). Besides Vroom, the only other artist who exerted a recognizable and sustained influence over Ruisdael was Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675). In turn, Ruisdael himself had a decisive impact on a host of landscape specialists, including Hobbema, Roelof Jansz van Vries (c. 1630/31-after 1681), Cornelis Gerritsz Decker (?-1678), Klaes Molenaer (c. 1626/29-1676) and Jan van Kessel (1641-1680), to mention just a few.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 65-66; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Het leven der Ruysdaels’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 49-60; K.E. Simon, ‘Jacob Isaackzoon van Ruisdael’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX (1935), pp. 190-93; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978); J. Giltaij, ‘De tekeningen van Jacob van Ruisdael’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), nos. 2/3, pp. 141-208; S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven 2001, with earlier literature; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th century’, in P.N. Köhler (ed.), Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 281-86; J.P. Hinrichs, ‘Nogmaals over een oud raadsel. Jacob van Ruisdael, Arnold Houbraken en de Amsterdamse naamlijst van geneesheren’, Oud Holland 126 (2013), no. 1, pp. 58-62; T. van der Molen, ‘Ruisdael, Jacob van’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, C (2018), p. 116