Dutch Masters From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition themes:
The landscape

As For the art off Painting and the affection off the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond them, there having bin in this Country Many excellent Men in that Facullty, some att presentt, as Rimbrantt, etts, All in generall striving to adorne their houses, especially the outer or street roome, with costly peeces, Butchers and bakers not much inferiour in their shoppes, which are Fairely sett Forth, yea many tymes blacksmithes, Coblers, etts., will have some picture or other by their Forge and in their stalle. Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native[s] have to Paintings.

Peter Mundy, English traveller in Amsterdam, 1640

Prior to the seventeenth century, the landscape had served mainly as a source of inspiration for imaginary settings, as exemplified by Flemish painting. Now, however, a number of artists from Haarlem in particular 'discovered' their own surroundings – the vast panoramas of the flat Dutch countryside, criss-crossed by rivers. In their landscapes they gradually opted for a lower horizon, and the scenes they portrayed also became more recognizable and realistic, dominated by water and sky or, in the winter, by large expanses of ice filled with skaters.

Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/03–70) is regarded as one of the founders of classic Dutch landscape painting. The monochromatic style which he developed during the 1630s was imitated by many other artists. From the 1640s on, Ruysdael's palette became steadily lighter, and after 1660 he turned to more cheerful colours, especially in the clothing of his figures. For most of his life Salomon lived and worked in Haarlem, where he joined the painters' guild in 1623.

Salomon van Ruysdael was the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–92), the only member of the family to spell his name with an 'i' instead of a 'y'. While nothing is known of Jacob's training as an artist, he is renowned for both the large number and the astonishing variety of his landscape vistas. Jacob van Ruisdael, who travelled widely in search of subjects for his art, moved to Amsterdam in 1656, where he taught Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709), another of the century's classic landscape masters.