Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9-1682), Dutch
Landscape of Wheatfield with Church
Oil on canvas
16 x 21 ½ 

The genre of landscape painting owes much to the work of the Dutch artist, Jacob van Ruisdael. His portrayal of the land, through keen observations of the natural world, in secular terms, had great impact on future artists who interpreted the land’s spirit with increasing expressiveness. In the oil on canvas, Wheatfield with Church, Ruisdael begins with the Dutch tendency to illustratively record the actual world using the familiar countryside stretching before him as his subject. The 17th century artist contributes to the early development of expressive landscape painting with this subdued composition when he moves beyond a simple snapshot account of the view by integrating slivers of brilliant light and color, areas of soft shade and muted tones, undercurrents of linear units, and a flow of directional devices that are kept unassuming in the composition, to contemplatively convey the picture idea of movement that continually shapes the ever changing experience of view.

In the foreground, middle and background planes Ruisdael addresses his theme of movement, yet in each area he will concentrate on a different means of plastic expression. The dark band of foreground softly presses into the scene, on the left, from the brown area of low brush, similar to Ruisdael’s characteristic fallen logs, from his earlier works, yet without their jutting force. Muted gray and brown tones, from Flemish influences, alternate, rippling back and forth as the recessive movement flows on a path to the right. The bands narrow and converge, and then shift the movement gently to the left in a swirl of gray curved color lines. The three planes compress in layers, on the far right, between the weight of the oppressive unit of dark gray cloud in the upper right hand corner pressing in and down, and the path that pushes back. The tension culminates on a small dot of a man, acting as a hinge for the movement. It is from this point that the middle ground opens up slowly, like a door cracked ajar, to let a beam of brilliant light stream across the overcast space.

A concentration of integrated light and color, from the Venetian tradition, becomes the agent of release from the otherwise dull scene. The sweep of the open door color band lends a smooth even pressure, as if passing across the surface of a floor, pushing back the subdued areas on either side. The expression of outward expansion results in the buckle of forward folds, and the lift that starts in the ribbons of hills beyond the bales of wheat and continues up, into the dark column of cloud. Using the slice of luminous color Ruisdael attempts a balance of equivalents amidst the predominately subdued picture, but it is a bit too glaring, holding the viewer’s attention in the middle ground. Consequently, the enhanced decorative appeal of this heightened green interrupts and stalls the rhythmic flow of movement. The billowing windswept clouds of the background pick up the action of pushing open, as they too divide the dull gray tones with narrow bands of brightened blue. A sliver of blue parallels the brightest forward edge of the green field and skims along the hill’s ridge, from left to right, in a lost and found demarcation. With the assistance of the steeple that pushes upward with its pointed spire, the blue lifts, rotating and parting slightly in a counter clockwise channeling motion to cyclically return the action, as it sinks back down along the left gray edge of the cloud, to the green dot on the hill, and then on the glowing field.

Ruisdael’s representational color is derived from the color of objects in his natural world, and his minimal use of textural paint adds the fine details of blades of uncut wheat and bundles of gathered grain. Tiny dots of textural paint suggests light falling on, and reflecting off the bundles; however, his interest is in looking out at a scene, not in the surface quality of paint. And yet his limited textural touches to describe the details in the landscape will influence future artists. For instance, in the oil sketch, A Boat Passing a Lock (PMA) by the English landscapist, John Constable, Ruisdael’s restrained textural qualities will become prominent and spontaneous. Constable’s impasto will communicate that the picture is an object itself, bringing a greater degree of tangible perception to the painted experience of land and changing atmospheric conditions. Ruisdael’s overall smooth brushstrokes, nevertheless, do serve to accomplish a unified surface.

Interested in looking out across the episodic view, Ruisdael uses a zig-zag device to move through the depth of the landscape, while linking the foreground, middle and background planes. From the left, the backward progression initiates across the tips of the uncut glowing wheat, turns back along the orderly line of bales, then right to the dark greenish brown line of the rear field. The movement reverses left through the dark ribbon of hill to the canvas’s edge, across the glint of reflective light that skims atop the hill, and then at last connects to the blue vein that circles in the sky. Furthermore, the artist portrays the bundles of wheat in diminishing size to demonstrate recession. Ruisdael’s attempt at compositional unity through the relationships of the two ovals of undergrowth, center foreground, two dots of trees on the distant hill, and two white sunlit puffs at the edge of the large center cloud, to link with these rows of bundled wheat are weak. Years later, the French artist, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot in Italian Landscape will use sheep in this way, but with more effective variety to unify the composition, when the livestock, like stepping stones, transition to volumetric units of rocks or clouds that move the eye back with greater interest, as they twist and turn through the space.

If it is true, as instructor, Bill Perthes says, “…that it is the obstacles in art and life that keep things interesting,” then Ruisdael’s form is weak. His subtle work in Wheatfield with Church does indeed communicate a sense of opening up movement, but his open-ended middle ground opposed only by a dot of a man, combined with a pervasion of muddied color, and inadequate transitions and repetitions creates little interest or drama. Even so, Ruisdael leaves behind in Wheatfield with Church, a worthy model for future artists to adopt and adapt. Artists, such as Cezanne, will look back at Ruisdael’s wedge of luminosity and use it with greater expressiveness and confident integration to open up favored woodland scenes. The Dutchman’s dot of a man will grow, becoming Cezanne’s millstone, to turn the viewer’s eye with curiosity and interest along a path of painterly traditions that are passed on and modified so that all may enjoy a richer aesthetic experience of the artist and his changing impressions of landscape.

Analysis by Marie Slovich