Landscape with Sluice Gate

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Landscape with Sluice Gate

Artist Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628-1682)

Place of OriginNetherlands

Date1665-1670

DimensionsPainting: 41 × 44 1/2 in. (104.1 × 113 cm)
Frame: 51 × 44 1/2 × 4 1/2 in. (129.5 × 113 × 11.4 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1978.68

Not on View

Collections

Paintings

Published ReferencesSmith, John, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, London, 1835, VI, p. 98, no. 311.

Hofstede de Groot, C., A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1912, IV, p. 212, no. 675.

Vries, A.B. de, "Old Masters in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney van den Bergh," Apollo, 80, Nov. 1964, p. 357, fig. 7.

Vries, A. B. de, Verzameling Sidney J. van den Bergh, Wassenaar, 1968, no. 88, repr.

"Art Across North America," Apollo, vol. 111, no. 215, Jan. 1980, repr. p. 61.

"For the Record," Art Gallery, vol. 23, no. 2, Jan. 1980, p. 36, repr.

"La chronique des arts," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, no. 1334, Mar. 1980, p. 34, repr.

1979 Annual Report, Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 21, no. 4, 1979, p. 81, repr. p. 80.

Sutton, Peter C., "Ruisdael Retrospective," Art Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, Summer, 1982, p. 149.

"Acquisitions/1986," The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, vol. 15, 1987, p. 178.

Slive, Seymour, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings, New Haven, Yale, 2001, no. 519, p. 378, 380, repr. (col.) and 2 details.

Sutton, Peter C., Dutch and Flemish Paintings: The Collections of Willem Baron van Dedem, London, Frances Lincoln, 2002, p. 204, 205, no. 3, fig. 43a.

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 180, repr. (col.).

Exhibition HistoryFort Worth, Fort Worth Art Museum, 1954.

Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, 7d eeuwse meesters uit Nederlands particulier Bezit, 1965, no. 37, fig. 7.

Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings and Drawings of the 17th Century, 1968 (also Kyoto, Municipal Museum, 1969), no. 56, repr.

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Rembrandt et son temps, 1971, no. 87, repr.

Hague, Mauritshuis; Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Jacob van Ruisdael, 1981-1982, no. 40, p. 118, repr. (col.).

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape, 2005-2006, no. 40, p. 56, 126, repr. (col.) and det. (col.).

Label TextThis scene by the most versatile and expressive Dutch landscape artist of the 17th century is a study in contrasts. The river is quiet with the sluice gate closed, but peasants lay down bundles of willow branches to reinforce the riverbed against the rush of water that will come when the sluice gate reopens. On the bank, a hunter and his spirited dogs search for their fallen game. People are rare in Jacob van Ruisdael’s work, and even these figures are dwarfed by the enormity of the landscape around them. The trees tower far over the people’s heads, their height emphasized by the vertical format of the canvas, which is unusual in landscape painting.