Jacob van Ruisdael, 'A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape', probably 1660-70

The tall chimneys of the house hidden among the trees seem the most stable things in van Ruisdael’s picture, holding on to the steep hillside that slides down towards the river. The slender trunks of the birch trees on the right are twisted and crooked, and the leaves turning yellow are ready to fall and be swept away by the water.

The water pounds against the bridge’s legs as it tumbles down between them. The people on the bridge pause – one of them kneels, perhaps to pick something up, open to the elements, tiny and vulnerable. Another man trudges up the hillside path towards the house with his dog, little more than a speck of paint in the distance.

The rushing water turns an intense white where it foams over the stones and catches the sun. Van Ruisdael has painted the rocks in great detail: the tops of the closer ones in the water are razor sharp and craggy, becoming darker below, the edges more rounded where the water has worn them away. Further away beyond the bridge, the cliff face catches the sun, warming the lichen clinging to each block of stone. To the side of the cliff, he shows us the formation of the strata, layer on layer (incidentally giving the picture itself variation and interest).

Norwegian spruce trees reach up into dark, threatening clouds that gather overhead. The oak tree near them looks sturdy enough, hardly moving in the gathering storm, but a tiny oak sapling on the edge of the foam in the foreground is seemingly at the mercy of the torrent, part of its fragile trunk already broken and washed away.

From the late 1650s onwards, van Ruisdael painted many views that included waterfalls. For some time it was assumed that, since the Dutch landscape is almost uniformly flat, he must have visited a more mountainous country to give him such an abundant source for these pictures, although no record of such a journey has been found. But his friend Allart van Everdingen had been to Scandinavia in 1644 and returned with a number of drawings of the craggy mountains and waterfalls that became a source for van Ruisdael’s more dramatic images.

The painting was once considered a pendant to a Waterfall by a Cottage in a Hilly Landscape: the two pictures had always been together, portrayed a similar subject and were the same size. But in the mid-twentieth century it was decided that the second picture was by Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael, Jacob van Ruisdael’s cousin who imitated his style. This was confirmed when narrow strips that had been added to the picture were removed and the signature not only proved false but resembled that with which Jacob Salomonsz. signed documents.