Signed and dated 1645, this large canvas is one of the few known works by Isaack van Ruisdael, the father of Jacob van Ruisdael and brother of Salomon van Ruysdael. Employing a restrained and warm color palette, Isaack records a quiet corner of his hometown of Naarden. A young woman lays out linens at the center of a large courtyard, near which another fills a wooden bucket at a well and into which a man opens a gate. Towering over the scene is the city’s Grote Kerk, known also as Saint Vitus Church, built in the fifteenth century.1
Very little is known of Isaack van Ruisdael's artistic career. The biographer Arnold Houbraken listed him simply as a maker of frames, a mistake that led him to be largely overlooked as a painter until about 1935, when the art historian Kurt Erich Simon first attempted to assemble Isaack's somewhat elusive oeuvre.2 Christopher Brown (1982), Jeroen Giltaij (1992), and Seymour Slive (1997, 2001), took up this endeavor again nearly half a century later, and today a small corpus of works can be assuredly ascribed to Isaack's hand, including the present example.
Much of what is known about Isaack’s career has been gleaned from an analysis of his paintings: he was active primarily between 1645-1646, had a penchant for producing large-scale views of Dutch villages, regularly employed somewhat loose brushwork and a restrained palette, and almost always included his monogram “IVR” in his signature. In addition to the present canvas, Isaack’s body of work includes his View of Egmond aan Zee from the Dunes (1645) in the F.J. Philips collects ion in Eindhoven,3 View of Egmond aan Zee from the Shore in a private collects ion,4 and View of Weesp and the Vecht at Dusk (1645) in the Michaelis collects ion, Cape Town,5 among a few others.6 To this select group Slive added a River Scene with Barges, Houses and a Limekiln in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (fig. 1),7 a painting monogrammed IVR though attributed by some to Wouter Knijff. Slive considered the Philadelphia example in many ways analogous to the present canvas, particularly in the “broad handling of the plank walls and pediments of the wooden houses as well as the distinctive highlights of the pale red roofs and the treatment of the foliage.”8
Two years after the present canvas was painted, Isaack’s son Jacob also painted a view of Naarden. Of smaller dimensions, Jacob’s panoramic view, today in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, depicted the land outside the city, with its distinctive skyline visible in the distance.9
1. When this painting first appeared on the market, it was mistakenly identified as a view of Egmond, another town in North Holland.
2. K.E. Simon, “Isaack van Ruisdael,” in Burlington Magazine, CXVII, July-December 1935, passim.
3. Oil on canvas, 96 by 132, signed and dated lower left: J v Ruisdael 1645, although Slive notes that the monogram may have been tampered with. Slive 2001, pp. 614-615, cat. no. dub9, reproduced.
4. Oil on canvas, 87 by 130.5 cm, monogrammed lower center: IVR. Slive 2001, pp. 615-616, cat. no. dub10, reproduced. This painting was formerly in the collects ion of A.J. Philips, Eindhoven.
5. Oil on canvas, 106.7 by 151.2 cm, signed and dated lower right: IVRuisdael 1645. Slive 2001, p. 616, under cat. no. dub10, reproduced fig. dub10f.
6. For example, the brushwork and broad panoramic view of an unsigned painting in a private Brussels collects ion, A View of Naarden from the Zuiderzee, led Slive to suggest it as possibly a work by Isaack van Ruisdael.
7. Inv. no. W1902-1-20, oil on canvas, 76 by 105 cm, signed in monogram at left, on a plank secured to piles.
8. Slive 2001, pp. 648-649, cat. no. dub104, reproduced.
9. Oil on panel, 34.8 by 67 cm, signed and dated lower right: 1647. Slive 2001, p. 104, cat. no. 78, reproduced.