The peculiar charm of Dutch painting, which is quick to impress the observer conscious of the intrinsic beauty of simple, everyday things, is illustrated anew in the Institute's collection by A River Landscape by Salomon van Ruysdael. This picture, recently acquired through the Dunwoody Fund, is now on view with other Dutch paintings, and provides an opportunity for comparing Salomon's work with that of three other landscapists, all of whom have generally been estimated to be of greater stature than he: van Goyen, Salomon's nephew Jacob van Ruysdael, and Hobbema. Such a comparison reveals, contrary to all one may have been led to expect, that Salomon occupies a perfectly independent place in the Dutch landscape school and that his best work measures up admirably to that of his more famous countrymen. It shows him to be as delightful in his own way as was his nephew Jacob, by whom he has long been overshadowed.The painting by which he is now represented in the Institute presents a theme on which he played many variations. It is a broad, free scene with a river stretching across the width of the canvas and flowing off into a dim distance at the right. On a wooded bank to the left a group of peasants in a cart shouts to a boatload of people approaching the shore. Just beyond in a ferry boat loaded with cattle, and further out in the river a sail boat is drifting away from the shore. The far reaches of the water are dotted with other small boats.It is a commonplace enough scene; it is even pedestrian—groups of people holidaying or going about their business by the river bank. Yet van Ruysdael has infused it with the poetic quality that is to be found in so many simple Dutch pictures. The vast dome of the sky, with its drifting clouds and the rays of the sun sifting through them, the moist quality of the air, the village emerging from a thin mist in the distance, and the cool bluish tonality of the whole combine to record a perfect summer day in Holland. The painting shows Salomon van Ruysdael to have had the gift of simple, telling design and a profound awareness of the rhythmic movement of clouds. It reveals him, also, to have been yet another lover of his native land.The feeling of seventeenth-century Dutch artists for their country and for the least aspect of it is one that has never been equaled by the painters of other lands. Given the circumstances under which the school was formed it appears to have been inevitable. When Holland signed the truce with Spain in 1609, the Dutch people found themselves free after an interminable, and what must often have seemed a hopeless, struggle. Suddenly their destiny was in their own hands. What were they going to do with it? What were their artists going to do with it? Fromentin gives an answer in the following passage from his volume on The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland:"This was the problem: Given a nation of burghers, practical, unimaginative, busy, not in the least mystical, of anti-Latin mind, with traditions destroyed, with a worship without images, and parsimonious habits—to find an art which should please it, that should seize its conventionalities, and represent it. A writer of our time, very enlightened in such matters, has wittily replied that such a people had but one thing to propose—a very simple and bold thing, and moreover the only one in which their artists had constantly succeeded for fifty years, and that was to require that they should paint its portrait."This phrase says everything. Dutch painting, it is quickly perceived, was and could be only the portrait of Holland, its exterior image, faithful, exact, complete, and like, with no embellishment. Portraits of men and places, the sea and sky—such was to be, reduced to its primitive elements, the program followed by the Dutch School, and such it was from its first day to the day of its decline."Salomon van Ruysdael was one of the first to choose landscape as the aspect of Dutch life which he would represent. He was preceded by Seeghers and by van Goyen, to whose work his early canvases are often compared, and immediately followed by van Neer and his nephew Jacob. Salomon was born during the first decade of the seventeenth century and lived in Haarlem until he died in 1670. His River Landscape, signed and dated 1656 on the ferry boat in the foreground, was done during the period of his best work. It is an admirable example, and one that presents yet another facet of Dutch portraiture during the century of its greatest achievement.Referenced Work of Art River Landscape by Salomon van Ruysdael, signed and dated 1656. Detail showing ferry and sailboats on the river.

A sparkling and succulent Still Life by Pieter Claesz, which was acquired from the Cooke Fund and has recently made its appearance in the galleries, is producing a uniform reaction on the part of all observers: an overwhelming desire for lobster and a glass of hock. This is not surprising, for the artist painted his picture with the deliberate intention of glorifying the pleasures of the table. There is nothing gross about it. It is, rather, a poetic interpretation of that well-being of mind and body engendered by the contemplation of fine food temptingly presented. The architecture of the picture, the author's use of color and his absorption in texture, are an added interest to those concerned with the overall intention of the artist.Pieter Claesz was one of the earliest of the great seventeenth-century school of still life painters in Holland. One historian, recording the development of the school, says this of him: "One of the first still life painters of whose work we have examples is Pieter Claesz (1590-1661) of Haarlem of whom nothing is known." The statement is not quite accurate, for it is known that Claesz was born at Steinfurt in Westphalia and that he went to Haarlem in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. There he remained until his death in 1660 or 1661, producing the type of still life for which Haarlem is noted. As a signature he used his monogram, P C, superimposing the letters. His works are to be found, among others, in the National Museum in Antwerp, at Dresden, Munich, in the Boymans Museum, the National Gallery in London, and in numerous smaller museums and private collections. The remainder of what is known about him emerges from an examination of his paintings, which reflect his own character as a painter, the growing pride of Holland in its freedom, and the Dutch preoccupation with the glories of their country.The Institute's Still Life is a characteristic example of Claesz's style. The first thing that captures the spectator's attention if the elegance and authority of the repast he has chosen to present. Thereafter he observes the care with which it has been depicted. The elements of the supper are laid out on a table partially covered by a cloth of white damask. The focus of the picture is the silver platter bearing a boiled lobster and a small crab. To the left the eye rises by way of a green wineglass, its stem studded with prunts, and a baroque silver coffeepot to a tall beaker of bottle-green glass. It then drops to an octagonal gold watch, open at the back to show the works, which lies at the base of the coffee pot, and passes on around the front of the table noting a silver plate bearing one whole and one half-peeled lemon and a tilted bowl of brown sauce, a knife case decked with a blue ribbon, and a knife. It finally stops at the lower right corner with a silver plate of crusty rolls.The whole thing is executed with clarity and crispness, each object retaining its individual character yet each bound to the other by the light which falls from the left. The shells of the fish have precisely the color and quality they should have. One knows they will break with a dry crack. The rolls seem to crunch as one looks at them, and the skins of the lemons have the glistening, pitted surface that is oily to the touch. The sauce is rich and thick and the wine clear and cool. The metals and fabrics, too, retain their own peculiar quality, lending the scene an elegance associated with the still life paintings produced in Haarlem.It is an interesting fact that the origin of a Dutch still life of the seventeenth century can almost invariably be guessed by the objects used to compose it. Each painting reflects not only the character of the artist, but the character of the town in which it was produced. The rich and pleasure-loving burghers of Haarlem were chiefly interested in still lifes of food accompanied by handsome plate and beautiful glass. In the dignified town of Leyden, whose university was world-famous, books, music, and writing materials constituted the favorite subject. Still lifes from Utrecht presented fruits and flowers, and those from The Hague the colorful fish of the Scheveningen fish-market. Dutch still lifes, in fact, suited subject to taste as meticulously as did every other form of Dutch portraiture. Many of the painters who depicted this particular aspect of life in Holland were late in emerging as individuals in the still life group, and their work was frequently attributed to other artists. Claesz was one of the early exponents to receive tardy recognition, and his pictures are relatively rare.His handsome Still Life, with the monogram P C and the date 1643 on the gold watch lying at the left, is the first example of seventeenth-century Dutch still life to enter the Institute's collection. It is a brilliant work from every point of view, and one that reiterates the Dutch desire to record every phase of Dutch life, no matter how commonplace, in the period of its greatest achievement.Referenced Work of Art Still Life by Pieter Claesz, Dutch, 1590-1661. A brilliant example of Dutch still life painting. Acquired from the Cooke Fund.

Although not as well known as other painters from Delft, whose guild he entered in 1613, Cornelis Jacobsz. Delff was admired by his contemporaries for his singular depictions of kitchen interiors, the earliest of which dates to 1597. However, this composition is not simply a kitchen still life, but also an allegory of the four elements, with earth, water, air and fire represented by vegetables, fish, birds and metallic vessels forged in the furnace. This picture probably dates to c. 1600, making it the earliest Dutch "still life" in the permanent collection.