Jacob van Ruisdael, 'A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church', about 1665-70

A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church

Jacob van Ruisdael

Room 23

About the work

Overview

This, one of van Ruisdael’s most famous paintings, is a bigger version of his An Extensive Landscape with Ruins, also in the National Gallery’s collection. This sizeable picture was almost certainly painted on commission and was designed to hang in a very large room. Its size is matched by the sense of grandeur van Ruisdael has managed to create.

Although it is reminiscent of the countryside around Haarlem, where van Ruisdael grew up and trained as an artist, no one has been able to identify the main church or an exact location for the panorama. Most likely it was an idealised view, evoking and reflecting ideas that van Ruisdael and his customers had about how Holland should look. The productive nature of the landscape is represented by the shepherds, the corn and the windmill; a sense of history by the ruined castle. The church that dominates the horizon stood, in their eyes, for eternal certainty.

In-depth

This, one of van Ruisdael’s most famous paintings, is a much bigger version of a similar landscape by him that is also in our collection: An Extensive Landscape with Ruins. Other smaller versions also survive. We don’t know which was painted first but this sizeable picture was almost certainly painted on commission and was designed to hang in a very large room. The others were made for more modest surroundings.

The size of this painting is matched by the sense of grandeur van Ruisdael has managed to create; the vast sky is obviously important to this. It takes up about two thirds of the painting – a typical proportion in Dutch landscapes. But the way that the clouds seem to billow up towards us against a blue summery sky adds dynamism to the grandeur.

The landscape is underpinned with structural devices which help lead our eye into the painting. Closest to us, in the left foreground, stand two shepherds. They were painted by one of van Ruisdael’s contemporaries, Adriaen van der Velde, though they may well have been part of the original design. Combined with two much tinier figures on the road down towards the church, they help us understand the scale of the landscape – and tempt us to follow the winding path further, past the cottages until it disappears among the fields.

Van Ruisdael has used highlights, picked out by the sunshine which has momentarily broken through the clouds, to reinforce these devices and to add to the sense of depth. The sun illuminates not only the shepherds, but a sequence of features set at different distances from the viewer: first the castle and swans in the foreground, then the fields on the left and those which surround the windmill in the middle distance. A thin strand of blue shimmers on the horizon, suggesting the sun glinting on the distant sea. Finally, furthest from our eye, are the silvery tops of the highest of those billowing clouds.

As well as appreciating the sense of scale and depth he was able to conjure, van Ruisdael’s customers would have understood another dimension to this picture. The pastoral figures and the ruins in the foreground allude to a Italian tradition of depicting Arcadian scenes of country life among the ruins of ancient Rome. They had first been made popular a few decades earlier by Dutch artists returning from Italy. There was no expectation that these paintings represented real places; they represented an idea of a classical Italian landscape.

The same concept is true of this painting. Although it is reminiscent of the countryside around Haarlem, where van Ruisdael grew up and trained as an artist, no one has been able to identify the main church or an exact location for the panorama. Most likely it was an idealised view, evoking and reflecting ideas that he and his customers had about how Holland should look and what was important to them. The productive nature of the landscape was represented by the shepherds, the corn and the windmill; a sense of history by the ruined castle. The church – the building that dominates the horizon – stood, in their eyes, for eternal certainty.

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church
Artist: Jacob van Ruisdael
Artist dates: 1628/9? - 1682
Date made: about 1665-70
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 109 × 146 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876
Inventory number: NG990
Location: Room 23
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Wynn Ellis
Frame: 17th-century Dutch Frame

Provenance

Identified by Smith with a picture by Ruisdael in the Jan Gildemeester Jansz. sale, Amsterdam, 11 sqq. June 1800 (lot 190), bought by Thys (315 guilders). In the collection of the Marquis de Marialva, Paris, who died in 1823; bought privately by John Smith apparently in 1825 and in the John Smith sale, London, 2–3 May 1828 (lot 78*), bought by Richard Abraham (450 gns); exhibited with the rest of Abraham’s collection at the American Academy of Fine Arts, New York, in 1830; Richard Abraham sale, London, 28 June 1831 (lot 69), 275 gns. In the collection of Richard Sanderson, London, by 1835; Richard Sanderson sale, London, 17 June 1848 (lot 23), bought by Brown (480 gns). It was in the Wynn Ellis collection, apparently by 1850 or 1851, certainly before 1854; Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Neil MacLaren, revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School: 1600–1900’, London 1991; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2020

Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

The National Museum of Western Art

18 June 2020 - 18 October 2020

The National Museum of Art

3 November 2020 - 31 January 2021
2021

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

National Gallery of Australia

5 March 2021 - 14 June 2021

Bibliography

1800

P. van der Schley, Catalogue du cabinet de tableaux: Delaissés par l'amateur des beaux arts Jean Gildemeester, Amsterdam, 11 June 1800 - 13 June 1800
1830

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters: In Which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the Artists, with a Copious Description of Their Principal Pictures […], vol. 2, London 1830
1838

G.F. Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England, trans. H. Lloyd, vol. 2, London 1838
1854

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], vol. 2, trans. E. Eastlake, London 1854
1907

C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 10 vols, London 1907
1960

Maclaren, Neil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 2 vols, London 1960
1981

S. Slive and H.R. Hoetink, Jacob van Ruisdael (exh. cat. Mauritshuis, 1 October 1981 - 3 January 1982; Fogg Art Museum, 18 January 1982 - 11 April 1982), New York 1981
1983

C. Brown, 'Rubens' Watering Place: An Examination of His Landscape Technique', Ringling Museum of Art Journal, 1983, pp. 130-49
1990

I. Gaskell, National Gallery Master Paintings from the Collection of Wynn Ellis of Whitstable, London 1990
1991

Maclaren, Neil, revised by Christopher Brown, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1600-1900, 2nd edn (revised and expanded), 2 vols, London 1991
1993

E. Buijsen et al., Tussen fantasie en werkelijkheid: 17de eeuwse Hollandse landschapschilderkunst (exh. cat. Tokyo Station Gallery, 1 August - 27 September 1992; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, 10 October - 20 December 1992; Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art, 5 January - 21 February 1993; Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, 20 March - 20 June 1993), Baarn 1993
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001

Frame

This is a seventeenth-century Dutch scotia frame made of ebonised fruitwood, which would have been a more economical alternative to ebony. The cushion top moulding overhangs the wide scotia and ends with a chamfer sight moulding.

This frame was adapted to fit Ruisdael’s A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church in 2025.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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(Showing 6 of 21 works)

A Bleaching Ground in a Hollow by a Cottage

Jacob van Ruisdael

In the seventeenth century, the linen bleaching fields of Haarlem were considered to be the best in Europe. Linen was an important fabric and to fetch the highest prices its natural beige colour needed to be bleached white. The flat fields and ready water supply in the rivers and canals around Ha...

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A Cottage and a Hayrick by a River

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This is an early work by Jacob van Ruisdael, probably made when he was only about 20 years old, around the time that he qualified as an artist and joined the painters’ guild in his home town of Haarlem. He has built the composition around a stand of scrubby trees and a farmhouse on the edge of a...

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A Landscape with a Ruined Building

Jacob van Ruisdael

There is a feeling of melancholy about this composition. The sky is dark and oppressive, and the background is dominated by shadowy cliffs. In the right foreground, the fallen birch tree – a common device to help give an impression of depth to a view – hints at the destructive power of nature. Th...

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A Landscape with a Waterfall and a Castle on a Hill

Jacob van Ruisdael

Heavy, rain-dark clouds loom over a rugged landscape of scrubby trees, crags and three pines dramatically silhouetted against the sky. Right in the centre of the picture, a river emerges black and mirror-like from a fold in the hills, transforming into a seething cauldron as it tips over a rock l...

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A Panoramic View of Amsterdam looking towards the IJ

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Room 16

A Pool surrounded by Trees

Jacob van Ruisdael

There’s an air of stillness in this large painting that is unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael’s work. The clouds hang as if suspended over the forest and the leaves of trees – often restless in his other pictures – are quiet, though by no means lifeless. Reflections tremble a little in the water, and...

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A Road leading into a Wood

Jacob van Ruisdael

This landscape was, for a long time, thought to be by a follower of Jacob van Ruisdael, but both the landscape and the figures are now considered to be van Ruisdael’s work.The identification was probably made difficult by the layers of old varnish that obscure the work, but it’s still possible to...

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A Road winding between Trees towards a Distant Cottage

Jacob van Ruisdael

A rutted road leads into a wood and winds round to the right and over a rise to disappear. This is an often repeated theme in Jacob van Ruisdael’s early paintings – scenes of the Dutch countryside designed to please busy city dwellers wanting a moment of tranquillity in the home, or a reminder of...

Room 23

A Rocky Hill with Three Cottages, a Stream at its Foot

Jacob van Ruisdael

This painting, for some time thought to be by an unknown artist, is now considered to be by Jacob van Ruisdael, the leading Dutch landscape painter of the seventeenth century. The rocky hillside lit with patches of sunlight from the broken, scudding clouds overhead is typical of van Ruisdael’s wo...

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A Ruined Castle Gateway

Jacob van Ruisdael

Jacob van Ruisdael was the foremost seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter, and even paved the way for the rural scenes Thomas Gainsborough painted in England in the eighteenth century. Gainsborough admired and made copies of van Ruisdael’s work, but rather than the pastoral views that appea...

Room 23

A Torrent in a Mountainous Landscape

Jacob van Ruisdael

A mountain top shrouded in mist, a bubbling torrent of water tumbling headlong down a rocky hillside, a lone tree piercing the clouds – this was one of the favourite themes of the great Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael during the middle of the seventeenth century. Inspired by drawings ma...

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A Waterfall at the Foot of a Hill, near a Village

Jacob van Ruisdael

The strong wind blowing towards us in this picture is almost tangible. Water roars and tumbles over bare rocks that jut up through the foam. Clouds pile high and rush overhead, echoing the shape of the tossing trees below before they swirl and reform to make room for more, perhaps bringing gusts...

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A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape

Jacob van Ruisdael

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...

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An Extensive Landscape with Ruins

Jacob van Ruisdael

A grey, turbulent sky dominates the scene, but our eye is also caught by a patch of light in the fields: the sun has broken through a crack in the clouds.This sense of fast-changing light brings the whole landscape to life, injecting movement into what otherwise might have been a static scene. Th...

Room 23

Ruins in a Dune Landscape

Jacob van Ruisdael

The mood in this painting is sombre, even sinister. It’s twilight, with the sky cloudy but – unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes – unmoving. The white walls of the ruins on the steep bank on the right almost give the impression that light is shining from them. The distant sand dunes look l...

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The Shore at Egmond-aan-Zee

Jacob van Ruisdael

The tide is ebbing at Egmond-aan-Zee, leaving a pattern of swirls in the still-wet sand. You can sense the outward sweep and undertow of the tide before the little waves tumble back towards the shore.The people lingering on the beach aren't fishermen, like the silhouetted figures near the boats....

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Three Watermills with Washerwomen

Jacob van Ruisdael

Jacob van Ruisdael’s washerwomen are strong and sturdy. One stands in the river up to her ankles and raises a stick to beat the linen she’s washing, while her companion stoops to rinse a cloth. Behind them a heap of dirty washing awaits the attention of their brawny arms. Their dog lifts his head...

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Two Watermills and an Open Sluice at Singraven

Jacob van Ruisdael

The wind seems to chase the clouds across this painting, letting through a fitful sun to light up the tumbling water for one moment. In another it will be gone, falling instead on the sheep on the steep hillside across the valley, perhaps, or the distant windmill and church steeple beyond. The ma...

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Vessels in a Fresh Breeze

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Jacob van Ruisdael painted many landscapes, but few marine pictures; the ones he did make are simply views of the sea off the coast of Holland, with small sailing vessels usually in a wind varying from fresh to gale force.In this painting a small sailing vessel, probably a kaag (an inshore ferry...

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The Skirts of a Forest

Follower of Jacob van Ruisdael

This painting is a copy of Jacob van Ruisdael’s original, which is in a private collection in Canada. Made by an unknown follower, it shares the original’s sense of space and airiness, with a wide view past the dense trees and bushes on the left.Crossing the barrier of dead tree trunks across the...

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A Castle on a Hill by a River

Imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael

This picture was painted by a seventeenth-century Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael and is possibly an early work by the artist’s follower Johan van Kessel. It may be based on a lost work by van Ruisdael showing Bentheim Castle, which is on the border between Germany and the Netherlands, altho...

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You've viewed 6 of 21 works

Jacob van Ruisdael, 'A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church', about 1665-70

About the work

Overview

In-depth

Key facts

Details

Provenance

Additional information

Source

Exhibition history

Bibliography

Frame

About this record

Images

More works by Jacob van Ruisdael