Landscape with a Windmill (1646): Art, History and Details

Landscape with a Windmill (1646) 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:

Even this early work by Jacob van Ruisdael—painted while he was still a teenager—shows his unique approach to landscape that made the simplest motifs seem grand and heroic. Dark forms are massed in the foreground, creating a stark contrast to the expansive, sunlit plain at left.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with a Windmill
• Date: 1646
• Creator attribution: Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 69 x 88.5 x 4 cm (27 3/16 x 34 13/16 x 1 9/16 in.); Unframed: 49.5 x 68.5 cm (19 1/2 x 26 15/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1967.19

A detail from the museum

Look closely at the field across from the windmill: white linens are naturally bleached in the sun, a process that would have taken several months.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hofstede de Groot, C. P. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. London, United Kingdom: Macmillan and Co, 1908.
• Cook, Francis, Tancred Borenius, J. O. Kronig, Maurice W. Brockwell, and Herbert Frederick Cook. A Catalogue of the Paintings at Doughty House, Richmond, & Elsewhere in the Collection of Sir Frederick Cook, Bt., Visconde De Monserrate. London, United Kingdom: W. Heinemann, 1913.
• Rosenberg, Jakob. Jacob van Ruisdael. Berlin, Germany: B. Cassirer, 1928.

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.