Collection Prof. Jan Bleuland (1756-1838), Utrecht, probably acquired in or after 1819, but certainly by 1833[i]

His sale, Utrecht (H. van Ommeren), 6 May 1839 sqq., no. 289 (‘Cet excellent tableau présente un eau agité avec des navires voguants, à l’approche d’une tempête’), fl. 2,330, to Van Brienen

Collection Baron Willem Joseph van Brienen van de Groote Lindt (1760-1839), The Hague

His son, Baron Arnoud Willem van Brienen van de Groote Lindt (1783-1854), Amsterdam and The Hague

His son, Baron Willem Diederik Arnoud Maria van Brienen van de Groote Lindt (1814 -1873), Amsterdam and The Hague

His sale, Paris (E. Le Roy and F. Laneuville), 8 May 1865 sqq., no. 35 (‘A l’avant-plan, une estacade et des pilotis contre lequels se brisent, en les couvrant d’écume, les vagues d’une mer agitée. Au centre du tableau, un bateau à voile rouge, manoeuvré par trois marins, s’éloigne poussé par une forte brise qui souffle de terre. Plus loin, une autre embarcation, mais à la voile blanche, est vivement éclairée par les rayons du soleil; l’équipage tourney la voile pour se remettre sous le vent. A droite, d'autres bateaux, voguent à pleines voiles. Dans le fond, à gauche, s'élèvent le clocher et les maisons d'une ville vers laquelle se dirige un bâtiment. A travers un épais rideau de nuages qui cache à demi le ciel, s'échappent par intervalle quelques rayons d'un pâle soleil dont les teintes, se combinant avec le vol pesant des mouettes rasant les vagues, font pressentir l'approche-d'une tempête.’), frs. 4,900, to Suermondt

Collection Barthold Suermondt (1818-1887), Aachen, from whence 12 May 1874 to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin

Exchanged by the Museum, 1924, with the dealer van Diemen, Berlin

Private collection, Frankfurt, by 1928

Collection K.A. Volz, The Hague

Collection August Wilhelm Volz (1873-1944), The Hague, 1936/37

Collection Étienne Marie Louis Nicolas (1870-1960), Paris

Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 27 June 1962, no. 30, £ 2,500, to Brod

The dealer Alfred Brod, London, 1963

Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 14 December 1977, no. 22, £ 18,000, to St. Lucas

Galerie St. Lucas, Vienna 1978/79

Collection Erna Weidinger, née Wertanek (1923–2021), Vienna

Her sale, Vienna (Im Kinsky), 8 November 2022, no. 23

Brussels, Société Néerlandais de Bienfaisance à Bruxelles, Exposition de tableaux et dessins d’anciens maitres, 1873, p. 18, no. 30 (lent by Suermondt)

Brussels, Musée Royale des Beaux-Arts, Catalogue de la collection de tableaux et dessins anciens et modernes de M. B. Suermondt, exposée dans un but philantropique, 1874, p. 58, no. 153

The Hague, The Mauritshuis, Oude Kunst uit Haagsch bezit, 1936/37, no. 168 (lent by Volz)

London, Alfred Brod, 9 - 30 May 1963, no. 17

Vienna, Galerie St. Lucas, old master paintings, Winter 1978/79, no. 19

 W. Bürger [Th. Thoré], ‘Nouvelles études sur la Galerie Suermondt: XIII. Les Ruisdael’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1869), pp. 183-84 (as Salomon van Ruysdael), illustrated with an etching by L. Flameng (1831-1911), p. 186

Anonymous, ‘Stürmische See, Oelgemälde von Jak. Ruisdael in der Galerie Suermondt in Aachen’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 4 (1869), pp. 240-43 (illustrated with the same etching as in Bürger / Thoré 1869)

C. Vosmaer, ‘Tentoonstelling van schilderijen en teekeningen te Brussel’, De Nederlandsche Spectator 18 (1873), p. 148

R. Ménard, ‘Exposition rétrospective de Bruxelles’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1873),

p. 541

P. Mantz, ‘La galerie de M. Suermondt’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1874), p. 453

F.C. Willis, Die niederländische Marinemalerei, Leipzig 1911, p. 63

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols., Esslingen/Paris 1907-28, IV (1911), p. 282, no. 942. p. 294, no. 978

Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Gemälde im Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin, Berlin and Leipzig 1921, no. 885B

J. Rosenberg, Jacob van Ruisdael, Berlin 1928, no. 582

G.A.M. Janssen, Das Haus Herengracht 182 zu Amsterdam und seine Sammlung von Gemälden Niederländischer Maler des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, Munich 1988, pp. 117-18

H. Lepper, ‘Kunsttransfer aus der Rheinprovinz in die Reichshauptstadt. Der Erwerb der Gemälde-Sammlung des Aachener Industriellen Barthold Suermondt durch die Königlichen Museen zu Berlin im Jahre 1874. - Ein Beitrag zur Museumspolitik Preußens nach der Reichsgründung’, Aachener Kunstblätter 56-57 (1988-89), p. 304, no. 90

S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven and London 2001, p. 463, no. 654

S. Avery-Quash, The Travel Notebooks of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, 2 vols., London 2011, I, p. 543

P. van den Brink and V. Birth (eds.), Gestatten, Suermondt! : Sammler, Kenner, Kunstmäzen, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2018, pp. 366, no. 302.

S. Randhage, Die Seebilder des Jacob van Ruisdael, Berlin etc. 2021, pp. 444, no. 18

All of his life, Jacob van Ruisdael lived in close proximity of water. First, in Haarlem, the dunes and sea were close by. Later, when the artist had settled in Amsterdam, he lived on the Kalverstraat and ‘Beurstraet’, the present-day Rokin, both of which are near the Dam, a harbour inside the city-walls. It is therefore surprising that the sea and IJ only play a minor role in Ruisdael’s work. Around thirty marine paintings have been preserved and just one drawing depicting a river scene.[1] These are small numbers considering Ruisdael’s entire extant output consists of about seven hundred pictures and about one hundred and forty drawings. The paintings were nevertheless praised by connoisseurs from early on. The artist’s early biographer, Arnold Houbraken, professed that Ruisdael was even ‘one of the best’ in this branch of art.[2] Ruisdael’s seascapes continued to spark admiration, culminating in Turner’s Port Ruysdael of 1826 or 1827, which is a homage to Ruisdael’s marine art, inspired by his marine paintings, amongst others the one in the Louvre (fig. 1).[3]

Fig. 1, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Port Ruysdael, 1826

or 1827, canvas 42 x 61 cm. New Haven, Yale Center for

British Art, inv. B1977.14.80

Fig. 2, Jacob van Ruisdael, Rough Sea at a Jetty, canvas

112 x 132 cm. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum,

inv. AP 1989.01

Further proof of the wide recognition for Ruisdael’s seascapes is that so many of them have ended in leading museums across the globe. In addition to the Louvre in Paris, examples are to be found in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Musées Royaux de Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, London’s National Gallery, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Arguably Ruisdael’s most celebrated sea picture is the one in Fort Worth (fig. 2).[4]

All of Ruisdael’s marines show an agitated sea and only a few are topographically identifiable.[5] The shipping usually plays a subordinate role, the real subject of each seascape being the tempestuous weather. Thus, Ruisdael treats the viewer to billowing storm clouds and a dramatic use of light. Generally, more than two thirds of the composition is devoted to a tumultuous sky with storm clouds between which sunlight is cast down on the rough surface of the water.

The chronology of Ruisdael’s oeuvre is still an open issue, and this certainly applies to the marine paintings, none of which is dated. Yet, when reviewing Ruisdael’s seascapes, a clear development and technical progression become clear, enabling to roughly put them in the right order. Seymour Slive dates a small painting in the RCE to the late 1640s, which would be Ruisdael’s earliest preserved seascape.[6] This is Ruisdael’s only view of the sea featuring a rainbow and it may well be based on a late painting by Jan Porcellis (1584-1632) in Boston, also with a rainbow.[7] Slive singled out Ruisdael’s picture in Stockholm as another early work that is indebted to Porcellis and the latter’s ingenious follower Simon de Vlieger (c. 1601-1653).[8] Porcellis and De Vlieger were both pioneers with their experiments to give more prominence to a truthful and dramatic portrayal of choppy seas, overcast skies and atmospheric effects. It is clear Ruisdael sought to emulate them. Slive dated the earlier-mentioned Fort Worth picture to the early 1650s. Our painting he assigned a date of 1665-70.

By the time Ruisdael painted the present work, he had refined his vocabulary for representing imposing yet fleeting impressions of heavy weather. Also in terms of composition and spatial effects he had perfected his scheme, of which Slive gave an apt summary: ‘It consists of a high sky filled with clouds that tower over a relatively narrow band devoted to an expanse of the sea affected by winds that range from fresh to almost gale force; in the foreground waves either play or pound against pilings, a jetty or wharf that projects from one side of the painting.’[9] As Slive also observed, shipping is mostly confined to the middle and far distance. The first time Ruisdael employed this formula is in London, which Slive locates in the early or mid-fifties.[10]

In our work, the artist used a medium-sized canvas but his rendition of strikingly monumental clouds, making the shipping seem insignificant, is full of effect. As often in Ruisdael’s mature productions, we witness a transition in the weather, which affects the overall mood of the view. The crashing waves in the foreground indicate very strong wind, but the sun breaks through the sky, heralding calmer weather: The storm is retreating. As often, Ruisdael’s poignant depiction of the sublime elements stresses nature’s transitoriness, lending the scene an epic dimension. The sailing vessels manned by anonymous sailors are dwarfed against the vast sky, evoking man’s subservience to the everchanging mighty weather.

Our painting is strongly related to Ruisdael celebrated Vessels in a Choppy Sea in Boston (fig. 3).[11] It may predate it with one or two years. The Boston picture is more ambitious and larger. Furthermore, Ruisdael achieved a greater unity between the colour scheme of the sky and sea. Several elements already included in the present painting have been reused but in a slightly more sophisticated way, such as the combination of vessels that appear as dark silhouettes and others with a sunlit sail.

Fig. 3, Jacob van Ruisdael, Vessels in a Choppy Sea, canvas

107.1 x 125.8 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 57.4 

It is doubtful if Ruisdael depicted an existing location accurately; the church spire in the far distance does not allow identification. However, as the great art critic Théophile Thoré (1807-1869) already assumed in 1869, the artist no doubt hinted at the IJ, since the immediate foreground shows a shore and the far distance banks with a skyline of treetops and a village.[12] 

Our painting boasts an impeccable pedigree with such distinguished former owners as the famous physician Professor Bleuland, who also was one of the leading Dutch collectors of his day. Willem Joseph van Brienen van de Groote Lindt and his grandson both were influential politicians and avid collectors with a refined taste. The picture then ended up in the large and important collection of Barthold Suermondt, the first major founder of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen. In 1874, much of his collection was sold to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin under the direction of Julius Meyer and Wilhelm von Bode, including important works by Jan van Eyck, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Hans Holbein II, Rubens and Jan Steen. Another part of his collection, consisting of 104 valuable paintings, was bequeathed to the city of Aachen in 1882. A still later owner, was Étienne Marie Louis Nicolas, an entrepreneur who founded a wine imperium that still exists.

Various copies after our painting attest to its popularity. An old competent copy is in Strasbourg (fig. 4).[13] A watercolour by Karel la Fargue (1738-1793) in the Kunsthalle Hamburg shows the composition of our seascape mirrored. This is a touched up counterproof of an unknown copy (fig. 5).[14]

Fig. 4, After Jacob van Ruisdael, A Rough Sea,

canvas 56 x 79 cm. Strasbourg,

Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. 571

Fig. 5, Karel la Fargue, after Jacob van Ruisdael,

A Rough Sea, watercolour over black chalk 184 x 232 mm.

Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 22455

Jacob van Ruisdael’s year of birth is deduced from a document of 1661, in which he stated his age as 32. His father, Isaack van Ruisdael, was a painter, a frame maker and a picture dealer. Undoubtedly, Jacob studied with him and possibly also with his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael (1600-03-1670). His earliest landscapes are dated 1646. Dated drawings from that year are preserved as well. During his first years of productivity, he also made some etchings. In 1648, Jacob joined the Guild of St. Luke in his native Haarlem. In these years he paid visits to Naarden and Egmond and recorded his impressions in drawings, which he later used for paintings. Around 1650 he travelled with his friend Claes Berchem to the area along the Dutch-German border. In 1656 or slightly later Ruisdael moved to Amsterdam, where he received citizenship in 1659. He remained in Amsterdam for the rest of his life and died a bachelor. Meindert Hobbema is Ruisdael’s only documented pupil, but his influence extended to a large group of contemporary landscape painters, among them Guillaume Dubois, Cornelis Decker, Roelof van Vries, Salomon Rombouts and Jan van Kessel.

Notes