The Ford

Salomon van Ruysdael was one of the foremost landscape painters of the seventeenth century.  (The spelling of his name is sometimes confused with that of his landscape painter nephew, Jacob van Ruisdael.) He specialized in dunes, river banks, and shoreline scenes, and his views of Holland are broad and spacious.  His naturalistic use of color with genuine regard for atmospheric effects discloses a harmony between man and nature not conveyed by European artists before this time.

The Ford is a typical rural scene of animals and wagons crossing a shallow stream.  Van Ruysdael's treatment of the vast and billowing clouds demonstrates how increasingly important this feature was to Dutch painters.  Great feathery trees lean toward these shadowy clouds, hinting at a change in the weather.  An entourage of burghers makes its way into the middle distance, as a herdsman hastens to direct his cattle.  Barely visible on the horizon, though always significant in such paintings, are a church tower and a windmill, important symbols of seventeenth-century Dutch culture.