Salomon van Ruysdael Naarden 1600/3 - 1670 Haarlem

Dr. Eduard Beith;
By whose Estate sold, London, Christie's, April 8, 1938, lot 51(as dated 1633), for £796 to Katz;
With P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1938;
K. Jonas E. Hesselman, Storängen, Sweden, by 1945;
With S. Nystad, The Hague;
From whom purchased by the Toledo Museum of Art in 1967 (acc. no. 67.15, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment). 

W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, Berlin 1938, p. 139, no. 322A (described as dated 1633, not 1653, an error that was corrected in the second edition of the catalogue);
W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, 2nd, revised edition, Berlin 1975, p. 127, no. 373A;
The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo 1976, pp. 148-9, reproduced Plate 115;
P.C. Sutton, Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids, MI 1986, pp. 293 and 346;
B. Broos, Great Dutch Paintings from America, exhibition catalogue, The Hague 1990, p. 106.

Salomon van Ruysdael painted landscapes of rivers and waterways throughout his career, but his works of the 1640s and 1650s are larger and on a grander scale than the muted and carefully controlled compositions of his youth.  The River Landscape with a Ferryboat is characteristic of these later works.  Rusydael enlarged his palette and painted it in a broader range of colors.  The sky is a clear bright blue, providing a backdrop for the heavy clouds and the water is a steely blue-grey.

The subject is a familiar one, for Ruysdael made numerous paintings with ferryboats, beginning in the 1630s.  The difference is that in his maturity he introduces a new spaciousness into his compositions.  Here the ferry, with its four cows, horsemen and six passengers glides slowly into shore.  The boat itself is quite close to the viewer, visually separated from the sunlit water behind.  The large central trees, so characteristic of Ruysdael, are an anchor and point of balance.  As they lean over the water they seem to counter the progress of the slow-moving ferry.  Closing off the composition at the right is a large building whose turrets rise over the surrounding trees.  Stechow notes that it is similar though not identical to the castle at Duurstede, and appears in four other paintings by Ruysdael.¹   The high clouds at the left and intense blue of the sky balance the denser elements at the right, while the small boat sailing off into the distance leads the viewer back along the river and to the distant town beyond.  The overall effect is of a long summer's day, where everything is happening in slow motion with endless time for contemplation.   

Although specific elements are familiar, it is Ruysdael's genius that he is able to take these various motifs and combine and recombine them in different ways.  As in River Landscape with a Ferryboat , the best retain an immediacy and freshness that set Ruysdael apart from his contemporaries.

1  See W. Stechow 1975, Op. cit., nos. 358, 371, 414 and 508A.