Wooded and Hilly Landscape (1660s): Art, History and Details

Wooded and Hilly Landscape (1660s) 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:

Jacob van Ruisdael, one of the most eminent Dutch landscape painters, is revered for his brooding woodland compositions. With much of this painting's composition dedicated to nature alone, an underlying sense of sublimity is heightened by Ruisdael through the inclusion of several diminutive figures. A mother and child trudge through a weathered path in the foreground, their pet dog following closely at their side, while a lone traveler approaches from the foliage ahead of them. This work is an excellent representation of the artist's later period, speaking to both his preoccupation with meticulous detail and the transitory relationship between humans and nature.

Object facts

• Title: Wooded and Hilly Landscape
• Date: 1660s
• Creator attribution: Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 73 x 81.5 x 11 cm (28 3/4 x 32 1/16 x 4 5/16 in.); Unframed: 51.6 x 59.4 cm (20 5/16 x 23 3/8 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1963.575

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisition Press Release,” September 3, 1964, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Saisselin, R. G. “Art Is an Imitation of Nature.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 2 (February 1965): 34–44.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.