Note (return) — Chapter XIII · 50

'In no other is there the feeling for the poetry of Northern nature united with perfect execution, admirable drawing, great knowledge of chiaroscuro, powerful colouring, and a mastery of the brush which ranged from the minutest touch to broad, free execution.' His prevailing tone of colour is a full, decided green, though age has given many of his pictures a brown tone. A considerable number of his pictures are in a greyish, clear, cool tone (good examples of the last are to be seen in the Dresden Gallery). He generally painted the flat Dutch country in tranquil repose. He dealt usually in heavy clouded skies which told of showers past and coming, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by trees, lending a melancholy sentiment to the picture. He was fond of wide expanses of land and water, fond also of introducing the spires of his native Haarlem, touching the horizon line. He has left a few sea-pieces, always with cloudy heavens and heaving or raging seas; 55 where he has given sketches of sea, and shore, the ærial perspective is rendered in tender gradations 'full of pathos.' He has other pictures representing hilly, even mountainous, landscapes. In these foaming waterfalls form a prominent feature. Ruysdael was weak in his drawing of men and animals, in which he was occasionally assisted by fellow-artists, such as Berchem and Van de Velde. Among his finest pictures are 'A View of the Country round Haarlem,' in the Museum of the Hague; 'A flat country, with a road leading to a village and fields with wheat sheaves,' in the Dresden Gallery; 'A hilly bare country through which a river runs; the horseman and beggar on a bridge, by Wouvermans,' in the Louvre. His most remarkable waterfall is in the Hague Museum. In the Dresden Gallery there is 'A Jewish Cemetery,' 'full of melancholy.' Three of Ruysdael's fine waterfalls are in the National Gallery. Of two very grand storms which he painted one is in the Louvre, the other in the collection of the Marquis of Lansdowne at Bowood. There are many of Ruysdael's pictures in England. In the great landscape painter, as in the other renowned Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, the influence of Rembrandt is marked.