Landscape with a Church by a Torrent (c. 1670): Art, History and Details

Landscape with a Church by a Torrent (c. 1670) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

It is not known if Ruisdael considered his paintings to be social or moral commentary, for no documents from his lifetime indicate how the artist or his patrons interpreted the works. But in this painting dangerous rapids block access to the chapel, and severed logs litter the middleground, hinting at life’s transience and the challenge to reach salvation.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with a Church by a Torrent
• Date: c. 1670
• Creator attribution: Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 100.3 x 83.8 x 10.8 cm (39 1/2 x 33 x 4 1/4 in.); Unframed: 71 x 55.2 cm (27 15/16 x 21 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1962.256

Collection credit

Bequest of Jane Taft Ingalls

Further reading listed by the museum

• Slive, Seymour. Jacob Van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
• Slive, Seymour. Jacob Van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
• Seymour Slive, letter to Victoria Sears Goldman, June 22, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.