Jan Ruyscher

Ruyscher may have been a pupil of Rembrandt, probably around 1645, and is recorded in Dordrecht between 1649 and 1651, and again in 1657.  On 16 July 1652, however, he was appointed court landscape painter in Cleves.  His surviving oeuvre is not extensive, but several of the drawings and etchings that are known depict views in the region of Cleves.  The subject of the present drawing is Hochelten, a picturesque spot not far from Cleves, which was depicted in drawings and paintings by a number of Dutch artists who visited the Lower Rhine region. One of the most notable of the drawings is a very large, two-part panorama, drawn in 1664 by Joris van der Haagen, and now in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, as is another depiction of the view, by Lambert Doomer.¹ 

This previously unknown drawing is in fact one of the more accomplished and ambitious landscapes by Ruyscher to have come to light. The treatment of the distant panorama, though in some ways also reminiscent of Koninck, is characteristic of Ruyscher's style, but it is in the treatment of foreground details, and in particular the figures and animals, that we see most clearly the artist's very distinctive handling.  In these elements, the drawing is closely comparable with the Flat Landscape with Shepherd and Flocks in the Foreground, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.²

2.  W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. X, New York 1992, no. 2307^xx