Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael

Rodolphe Kann, Paris;
Purchased from his heirs along with the rest of his collection by Duveen, August 1907;
With Duveen Brothers, Paris, 1911;
Mrs. W.W. Kimball, Chicago by 1920;
By whom bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921 (Inv. No. 1922.4470).

Flint, Michigan, Flint Institute of Arts, October 1949.

Catalogue of the Rodolphe Kann Collection, Paris 1907, Vol. I, p. 80, cat. no. 79, reproduced;
G. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, London 1912, vol. IV, p. 89, cat. no. 271;
"Notes. The Kimball Collection," in Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 14, 1920, p. 77;
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of Sculpture, Architecture, Paintings, and Drawings, Part II. Paintings and Drawings, Chicago 1920, p. 60, cat. no. 767;
M.B. Williams, "Valuable Collection of Paintings Added to Chicago's Art Treasures," in American Today - Fort Dearborn Magazine, 1924, p. 11;
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago 1925, p. 151, cat. no. 767;
J. Rosenberg, Jacob van Ruisdael, Berlin 1928, p. 86, cat. no. 223;
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago 1932, p. 170, no. 22.4470;
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago 1961, p. 409;
S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael, A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven 2001, p. 172, cat. no. 168, reproduced p. 173.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work has not been restored for many years. The canvas has an old glue lining. The paint layer is quite dirty. If and when the work is cleaned, the palette will certainly brighten, but a very healthy paint layer is not necessarily anticipated to be revealed. However, despite the abrasion in the darker colors of the landscape, some retouching to the cracks and some thinness in the sky, this work will certainly benefit greatly from a fresh approach to the conservation.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Seymour Slive dates this painting to the 1670s (see Literature).  The motif of waterfalls and moving water in Ruidsael's work derives ultimately from the compositions of Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675), who had travelled to Scandinavia in the mid-1640s and settled in Haarlem and later Amsterdam to paint.  Ruisdael may have had the opportunity to see Everdingen's Nordic landscapes as a young artist in his native city.  However it wasn't until he settled in Amsterdam to work that he began to use this subject matter, and the format of the vertical canvas, starting in the late 1650s and early 1660s, and continuing to experiment with it throughout the 1670s.

This painting was once in the renowned collection of Rodolphe Kann (1845-1905) in Paris who had a grand house on Avenue d'Iéna.  The greatest strength of his collection was Dutch 17^th century paintings and included works by Rembrandt (11 in total), Vermeer, Hals and Hobbema.  Among the masterpieces once in his collection are Vermeer's Girl Asleep at a Table and Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, both now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  After his death in 1905, the collection was sold en bloc in August of 1907 to Duveen Brothers for almost £900,000 and it was through Duveen that many of Kann's paintings ultimately entered some of the most important public collections in the United States.