Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

Nicola Francesco Haym (circa 1679-1729), London (L.1970);
Probably the Hon. John Spencer,
then by descent in the collection of the Earls Spencer (L.1530, stamped directly on top of the artist's monogram);
Eugène Schneider (1805-1875), Paris,
his sale, Paris, Pillet & Escribe, 3 - 4 April 1876, lot 89, 590 francs to Charles-Théodore Sauvageot (1826-1883),
from whom acquired by an ancestor of the present owner

Paper discoloured to a generally fairly even light brown, slightly darker in plaes towwards edges, and with one or two small lighter, less discoloured spots. Ink and wash, however, in good, strong condition. Drawing fixed to backing at top edge. Must previously have been laid down, as there are slight remains of old backing paper evident in various places on verso. Narrow strip of brown paper stuck around all four edges, verso. Paper otherwise in good condition. Sold in a modern wooden frame.
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This important, previously unrecorded landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael is a major addition to the artist's relatively small drawn oeuvre; only some 130 drawings are known today, of which few are as large in scale and elaborately worked up as this. 

In most cases, those more finished drawings are, like this one, signed with the artist's monogram, and two examples, both now in the British Museum, are dated, 1648 and 1649.¹  The British Museum drawings differ very slightly from this in terms of the media employed, incorporating touches of watercolour as well as the black chalk and grey wash seen here, but otherwise they are the most closely comparable of all Ruisdael's surviving drawings to the present work, so it seems reasonable to date this drawing to the same period of Ruisdael's career, the end of the 1640s.  

One of the London drawings, Landscape with a Grainfield and a Church with a Ruined Choir,² was also formerly in the Spencer Collection, and it is tempting to think that the church seen in the distance in our drawing might even be the same building that appears more prominently in the British Museum composition, and which has been tentatively identified as the church at Soest, some 35 kilometres southeast of Naarden, where Ruisdael's father was born. 

1.  S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven/London 2001, nos. D80, D81.  Just six of Ruisdael's known drawings are dated: three are from 1646 (Slive D21, D55, D132), one 1648 (Slive D80), and two 1649 (Slive D81, D109). 
2.  Slive, op. cit., no. D81