1 / 1

download image
This image is in the public domain. You can copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Learn more about our image policies.

Water laps at a curving shoreline in front of a steep sandy dune carpeted in grass, shrubs, and trees in this horizontal landscape painting. The dune takes up the lower right quadrant of the composition. A few broken tree trunks are overgrown with vines and plants across the top and down the sloping side of the dune facing us. A red brick wall cuts through the vegetation up the side of the dune and disappears into the shrubbery at the top. The twisting branches and canopies of three large trees reach into the upper right quadrant of the composition. The vegetation stops abruptly along the sheer edge of the dune where it faces the water. The land curves like a backward capital letter C so it almost reaches the left edge of the painting along the horizon, which comes a quarter of the way up the composition. A cow and three more animals, perhaps sheep or more cows, graze or lie on a grassy mound in the distance, and sailboats line the horizon in the deep distance. White ripples swirl in the steel-blue water. The artist signed and dated the lower center, “J Ruisdael . 1648.”

Jacob van Ruisdael

Dunes by the Sea, 1648

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 47

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

overall: 45.4 × 61.6 cm (17 7/8 × 24 1/4 in.)

framed: 64.77 × 83.19 cm (25 1/2 × 32 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund

Accession Number

2017.55.1

Artists / Makers

Jacob van Ruisdael (painter) Dutch, c. 1628/1629 - 1682

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower center: J Ruisdael . 1648

Provenance

Richter Oelrich, Bremen, c. 1820; purchased 1928 by Bernhard Hausmann [1784-1873], Hanover;[1] private sale 1 October 1857 to King George V of Hanover [1819-1878];[2] by inheritance to his son, Ernest August II, Crown Prince of Hanover and 3rd Duke of Cumberland [1845-1923];[3] (his estate sale, Rudolph Lepke Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 31 March 1925, no. 63, sold for 16,500 Reichsmarks). art market, Düsseldorf. private collection, Cologne, in 1948; (Kunsthandel K. & V. Waterman, Amsterdam), in 1982; purchased 1983 by Norman and Suzanne Hascoe, Greenwich, Connecticut; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 4 June 2014, no. 38); (Richard Green Fine Paintings, London); purchased May 2017 by NGA.

[1] See Joachim Petersen, Bernhard Hausmann: Burger, Fabrikant, Kunstsammler, Gottingen, 2009: 241: “The [four] landscapes by [Jacob van Ruisdael] were very highly regarded by Hausmann, especially ‘Dunes by the Sea’, purchased in 1828 in Bremen for 100 Thaler [then follows a quote, presumably from Hausmann]: 'Seit langem gekanntes kapital-Bild von erstem Range, von der seltensten Ausführung und Erhaltung' (Long since a well-known capital painting of the first order, of exceptional execution and preservation)."

[2] On a small piece of wood, inserted at the lower center of the cradle on the reverse of the panel, is painted all in red a monogram of the initials GR, surmounted by a crown, with a small V below the initials. These are the initials of King George V of Hanover. See Petersen 2009, 182-183: “The complete collection of paintings was sold to [King George V of Hannover] on 1 October 1857 for the--according to Hausmann’s (very accurate) opinion, not high--price of 48,000 Thaler, payable in annual installments of 5,000 Thaler, but it was to remain in Hausmann’s house until further notice. … Until the death of Hausmann [13 May 1873], [the painting collection] stayed in his house and was open to the public as the ‘George V Collection of Paintings’.” The painting’s owner and location was listed as “Hannover, Hausmann” by G. Parthey in Deutscher Bildersaal – Verzeichniss der in Deutschland vorhandenen Oelbilder verstorbener Maler aller Schulen, 2 vols. in 4, Berlin, 1864: 2:461, no. 135, which thus identified the work’s location, but not correctly its owner.

[3 From 1866 until 1893, the royal collection was confiscated by the State of Prussia following the annexation of Hanover, and placed under the control of the Fideikommiss-Galerie des Gesamthauses Braunschwieg und Lüneburg. Despite the confiscation, from 1866 until Hausmann’s death in May 1873, the collection remained at his residence. For the timeline of the confiscation, see Helmut R. Leppien, “Die Bilder der Bürger,” in Verschollener Ruhm – Bilder aus dem Depot der Landesgalerie Hannover zeigen den Kunstgeschmack des 19. Jahrhunderts. Exh. cat. Kunstverein Hannover, 1975: 6, 9.

From 1893, the painting was on long-term loan to the Provinzial-Museum Hannover as part of the “Cumberland-Galerie.” See Katalog der zur Fideikommiss-Galerie des Gesamthauses Braunschwieg und Lüneburg gehörigen Sammlung von Gemälden und Skulpturen im Provinzial-Museum, Hanover, 1905: 118, no. 357; https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t0vq6882x, accessed 30 June 2017. In A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 8 vols., translated by Edward G. Hawke, London, 1907-1927: 4(1912):285, no. 925, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot erroneously lists the painting as actually belonging to the Provinzial-Museum instead of Ernst August II, the Duke of Cumberland.

Associated Names

Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, Ernest
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Green, Richard
Hanover and 2nd Duke of Cumberland, George V, King of
Hascoe, Norman and Suzanne
Hausmann, Bernhard David
Kunsthandel K. & V. Waterman
Lepke Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Rudolph
Oelrich, Richter
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)

Exhibition History

1954: Meisterwerke holländischer Landschaftsmalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, 1954, no. 19.

1981: Jacob van Ruisdael, Mauritshuis, The Hague; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981-1982, no. 8.

1983: Loan to display with permanent collection, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 1983-1987.

2002: Pleasures of Collecting: Part I, Renaissance to Impressionist, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2002-2003, unnumbered catalogue.

2005: Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005-2006, no. 9.

2005: Old Master Paintings from the Hascoe Collection, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2005, no. 8.

2021: Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 20, repro.

Bibliography

n.d.: Führer durch die Museen in Hannover und Herrenhausen: Ein Gang durch die Cumberland-Galerie in Hannover. Hannover, n.d., after 1889: 9, unnumbered, as Sandhugel am Meere "on the rear wall" of Kabinet 9.

1831: Hausmann, Bernhard. Verzeichniss der Hausmann'schen Gemählde-Sammlung in Hannover. Braunschweig, 1831: 134-135, no. 270.

1863: Parthey, Gustav Friedrich. Deutscher Bildersaal. Verzeichniss der in Deutschland vorhandenen Oelbilder verstorbener Maler aller Schulen. 2 vols. Berlin, 1863-1864: 2(1864):461, no. 135.

1891: Katalog der zum Ressort der Königlichen Verwaltungs-Kommission gehörigen Sammlung von Gemälden, Skulpturen und Alterthümern im Provinzial-Museumsgebäude an der Prinzenstrasse Nr. 4 zu Hannover. Hannover, 1891: no. 474.

1905: Katalog der zur Fideikommiss-Galerie des Gesamthauses Braunschwieg und Lüneburg gehörigen Sammlung von Gemälden und Skulpturen im Provinzial-Museum. Hannover, 1905: 118, no. 357.

1907: Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 4(1912):285, no. 925.

1928: Rosenberg, Jakob. Jacob van Ruisdael. Berlin, 1928: no. 567.

1991: Walford, E. John. Jacob van Ruisdael and the Perception of Landscape. New Haven, 1991: 64.

2001: Slive, Seymour. Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings and Etchings. New Haven, 2001: 446-447, no. 635, repro.

2009: Petersen, Joachim. Bernhard Hausmann: Burger, Fabrikant, Kunstsammler. Gottiingen, 2009: 241.